The Legendary Cousin!

Inside the cattle shed.

Hearing Little Ox call out, William froze for a moment before breaking into delight.

"Hallelujah! Little Isaac? Why are you here so early today?"

As he spoke, he hurriedly set the fodder tucked under his arm aside, wiped his hands on his apron a few times, and strode over to the fence.

He smoothly took the firewood from Little Ox, gave him a light hug, then turned his gaze toward Xu Yun behind him.

After looking over Xu Yun's clothes, his attention lingered on the gold wire glasses for a moment. He then asked politely,

"Isaac, this is...?"

Little Ox secretly exchanged a glance with Xu Yun and followed the script they had prepared beforehand.

"This is an Eastern friend I met at Trinity College. His parents are Merchants from the Netherlands.

He got separated from his family while leaving London, so he came to Woolsthorpe to find me for the time being. He plans to stay in that garden house for now.

Look, the shoes on my feet were a gift he brought."

As soon as Little Ox finished speaking, Xu Yun cupped his hands toward William.

"Hello, my name is Li Feiyu. My ancestors came from the Wind Spirit Moon Shadow Sect in the East, and I currently live in the Netherlands."

"Hello, I'm William Askew, Isaac's uncle."

William stepped forward and gave Xu Yun a simple hug, his expression somewhat peculiar.

"Mr. Fat Fish, was it? I never expected Isaac to make a friend from a foreign land after spending a few years in London. That truly is delightful news.

Mr. Fat Fish, on behalf of the Aescu Family, I welcome you to Woolsthorpe. This little village may not be as prosperous as London or as extravagant as Amsterdam, but believe me, you will come to love it here."

Xu Yun nodded with a dry laugh, while the corner of his eye twitched nonstop.

Good lord, Fat Fish again.

Why did these British people always stress the second syllable? Was Feiyu really such a bad name?

Just as Xu Yun was talking with William, the door of the house behind William suddenly opened, and a blonde young girl of seventeen or eighteen stepped out.

The girl's looks were ordinary, and her face bore the freckles characteristic of many Europeans, but she radiated youthful energy and looked full of life.

"Father, Mother wants to know where you put the sharpening stone."

William turned to look at her, thought for a few seconds, and said,

"Go look behind the cupboard. It should be beside that white flag model I brought back from France last time."

The girl gave an "Oh" and ran back inside.

William turned back around, smiled apologetically at Xu Yun, and said,

"Sorry, that was my daughter Lisa. She's always making a fuss and has no sense of propriety. Please forgive her."

Xu Yun had originally intended to exchange a few polite words, but upon hearing the name Lisa, his pupils suddenly contracted.

Gradually, that tingling sensation of witnessing history surged through him again.

Anyone who knew Old Master Newton even a little knew that this scientific magnate had remained single until his death.

But single though he was, Little Ox's romantic history had become highly dramatic after being embellished by certain people in later generations.

According to the rumors,

Little Ox's first romance began during his years at King's School in Grantham. At the time, he boarded with the local Apothecary William Clarke, and before leaving for Cambridge University at nineteen, he became engaged to the Apothecary's stepdaughter, Anne Storer.

Later, because Newton focused on his research and let their love grow cold, Miss Storer married someone else.

But in truth, this was merely the account given by Eric Temple Bell and Eves in The Great Mathematicians.

There were two enormous errors in it.

First, Little Ox had never been engaged at all.

Second, the girl Little Ox liked was not named Anne Storer.

William Stukeley, Newton's contemporary friend, recorded in Memoirs of the Life of Sir Isaac Newton that after Newton's death, Stukeley visited Mrs. Vincent, who was Miss Storer, Newton's former lover.

Mrs. Vincent's name was Catherine, not Anne. Anne was actually her younger sister. (I found a scanned copy of Stukeley's original manuscript in the Bodleian Library, then contacted Mr. Men Zhiwei of Jida, a big shot who had studied Newton in China, before finally confirming this matter. The single updates over the past two days were because I was busy with this.)

And how old was Anne Storer at the time?

Three!

A child that age could barely speak clearly, let alone show any sexual characteristics.

Little Ox's surname was Isaac, not Joseph who loved wearing pants. Why would he like a three-year-old child?

Eric Temple Bell wrote The Great Mathematicians in 1934, more than two hundred years after Little Ox's time, so its reliability regarding Little Ox's love life was actually quite low.

Yet all the versions currently circulating use Anne Storer's name. Only a tiny handful mention Catherine Storer, and even some foolish author had been deceived for more than ten years.

If one thought further, who knew how much similarly false yet firmly entrenched information was still being spread without critical examination?

Back to the matter at hand.

Besides Catherine, Little Ox also had another rather "famous" romantic experience.

Rumor had it that Little Ox fell in love with another girl once, but when he proposed to her, his thoughts wandered, leaving only the infinite Binomial Theorem in his mind.

Little Ox smoked a pipe then, so he grabbed the girl's finger, mistook it for a pipe cleaner, and tried to force it into his pipe.

The pain made the girl cry out. After shouting in Qiongyao fashion, "You don't care about me at all," she left him, and Little Ox remained unmarried for the rest of his life.

Setting aside the fact that this rumor had no time, place, or names, the narrator could somehow read Newton's thoughts at that exact moment. That was far too fanciful.

Besides, later generations of researchers had investigated it thoroughly. Forget the girl; they could not even find any pipe ashes.

And apart from those two rumors, one true and one false, Young Newton's most famous remaining romance was...

A love affair with his cousin.

Rumor had it that when Newton fled the plague in 1665, he stayed at his uncle's home. There, he fell in love with his clever, studious, thoughtful cousin.

His cousin also liked this university student, who was learned, insightful, and skilled at persuading people through reason.

They often went on walks together. Newton liked to deliver long speeches on the spur of the moment, mostly about the subjects he was studying and researching.

Although his cousin could not understand them, she listened patiently and seemed to find them interesting. That was how feelings grew between them.

But Newton was shy by nature and never confessed his love to his cousin in time.

After returning to Cambridge University, he once again immersed himself wholeheartedly in scientific research.

He had always neglected his personal life, but his cousin mistook Newton's behavior for indifference toward her and married someone else in disappointment.

No one knew whether this romance was real. In the mouths of many Marketing Accounts, Newton's cousin even shared the same name as the woman above who had been proposed to, her identity brushed over with a simple label.

But unlike the woman above, who could not be found in any document, Newton's cousin really did exist.

Her name was Lisa Askew. (From a scan of the thirteenth handwritten manuscript in the 1712 Newton-manuscript collection of the Bodleian Library.)

Newton did indeed often visit his uncle's house while in Woolsthorpe. More importantly, before Old Master Newton died, he gave some of his manuscripts and inheritance to Lisa Askew's children—neither Hannah's remaining children nor Uncle William's other three children received the same treatment.

Furthermore, according to the firsthand account in the autobiography of Little Ox's friend, Edmund Halley, the discoverer of Halley's Comet, Little Ox had once mentioned that incident with his cousin to him.

Therefore, from a documentary perspective, Little Ox had most likely experienced such an unfinished romance.

This showed that—

Long-distance relationships really never ended well.

What, you did not even have a girlfriend in a long-distance relationship?

Then never mind.