No Wonder They're Family

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After introducing themselves and getting acquainted with each other's identities, William Askew quickly led Little Ox and Xu Yun into the house.

Those familiar with history would know that the seventeenth century was a pivotal period in British history.

In 1637, the bourgeois revolution broke out. By 1688, Britain had finally established a bourgeois constitutional monarchy, and capi-whatever-ism began to develop rapidly.

The current year was 1665. The Victorian architecture that would later sweep the world alongside constitutional monarchy had yet to emerge, so the vast majority of rural buildings still bore a strong Dutch influence.

William's house was one such example.

Besides the red brick Xu Yun had noticed earlier, it had a steeply pitched roof, crenellations along its outline, chimneys, and so on.

These additional structures were mostly irregular and uneven, asymmetrical from the outside, while the windows were generally square-headed and large.

The windows were arranged rather haphazardly, and a few climbing plants could be seen as well.

The house's exterior looked quite tastefully bourgeois, but a closer look revealed stains and even signs of aging in many places. Its true condition was nowhere near as modestly luxurious as it appeared at first glance.

As a physics nerd from the future, Xu Yun naturally knew William Askew's life story.

To put it plainly, the current William Askew could be summed up in one word: unlucky.

After his younger sister, Hannah Escu—Little Ox's mother—married Nabas Smith, William borrowed around twenty guineas from her and started trading horses.

He soon made a small fortune. The exact amount was unknown, but historians generally agreed it was somewhere between forty and fifty guineas.

William then spent a considerable sum renovating this house, over ten guineas in total—equivalent to fifteen years' income for an ordinary family.

Yet less than two years after the house was finished, William began suffering losses for seven straight years.

According to records Old Ox left in several letters,

William had worked in five or six industries over the years, including ironmaking, construction, fruit, and sailboat manufacturing. Not a single one had made him money.

William's most recent venture was the cotton, linen, and pig iron transport business mentioned earlier. This time, he had already found buyers and only needed to make the delivery to get paid, finally turning his luck around.

Unexpectedly, the Black Death began ravaging London, and the shipping routes were temporarily suspended.

Of course,

unlucky as William was, he was still a man of good character.

Britain was in the midst of colonial expansion, and as a Cambridge University graduate, William had connections that could have gotten him into the slave trade. Anyone who knew anything knew just how obscenely profitable that business was.

His friend Robert Cuneo had once approached him. He only needed to put up five guineas—roughly three hundred thousand in modern terms—to buy a share.

However, because William was a truly devout believer, he ultimately refused Robert's proposal and continued running legitimate businesses.

Whether William regretted that decision twelve years later, when Robert Cuneo became deputy governor of the Guiana Colony in South America, remained unknown.

You could say William's life had been shaped by brainwashing, or you could call it devotion. But judging from the facts, he truly was an honest merchant by the standards of doctrine and principle.

Creak—

The house's wooden door let out a long, aged groan, like some peculiar wind chime welcoming newly arrived guests.

William's house had no obvious entryway. After all, apart from Switzerland and Italy, many European and American countries even in later generations had no habit of taking off their shoes indoors:

they either walked around inside wearing shoes, or wandered about in socks or barefoot.

This habit was somewhat related to the difference between stone buildings and wooden buildings. Whether it was good or bad depended on how one chose to spin it.

For example, by ordinary reasoning, people would usually say that because domestic traditions ran deep, it would be inappropriate not to change shoes for certain customs, such as etiquette involving sitting face-to-face.

But in the mouths of certain people who had taken money, it could turn into claims that foreign streets were very clean, so there was no need to change shoes after returning home.

All right, back to the scene at hand.

When Xu Yun entered the house, the creaking wooden door was accompanied by a strange smell compounded from all sorts of odors.

Body odor, mold, dampness, and so on.

It was like soaking a straw mat that a 250-pound fat man had slept on through an entire summer without air conditioning, for three months, and then drinking the water. It was rather impactful for a modern person.

Fortunately, Xu Yun had a high tolerance for such things. He quickly adjusted and began examining the interior layout.

Unlike the heavy British countryside style outside, the environment inside William's home was simply awful:

Past the entrance was a rectangular living room with marble flooring. A fireplace had been carved into the wall on the left.

Above the fireplace hung a painting missing one corner, seemingly related to religious doctrine. Several wooden chairs and a recliner were arranged around it.

The somewhat blackened animal hide on the recliner made it easy to tell that these were furnishings William had bought before he started losing money.

Besides that,

the living room contained only several crates holding miscellaneous items such as chopping boards, ladles, and basins, as well as the triangular sloped roof overhead.

The mottled white walls bore the weathered scars of old cracks, along with marks left by sediment settling after water seepage.

There were no double-eaved nine-ridge roofs, no interlocking bracket sets, and certainly no yellow-tiled roofing. It was plain to the point of being dull.

At the far end, the living room split in two. One passage led to a room with a narrow entrance. Judging from the washbasin-like counter and wooden buckets on the floor, it was likely something like a back kitchen.

The other passage at the end was obscured from view, making it impossible to tell where it led. But barring surprises, the corridor most likely led to bedrooms, a study, and the like.

Just as Xu Yun was inspecting the interior, a faint sound suddenly came from behind him.

Xu Yun instinctively turned around, and the next moment, his gaze met a pair of adorably wide eyes.

Their owner was a little girl of five or six, with shoulder-length blond hair and somewhat worn, thin clothing.

Her face was smeared with mud and wood shavings, as if she had just returned from playing outside.

Xu Yun could not help muttering inwardly, What could possibly be fun outside in weather this cold?

Still, complaints aside, the little girl looked utterly adorable and heartwarming, so he naturally smiled at her.

"Hello there, little sister."

The little girl blinked her big, adorable eyes, a faint curve rising at the corners of her mouth. Then she pulled a black lump from behind her back.

Before Xu Yun could get a good look at it, she swung her little hand.

There was a smack.

The thing hit Xu Yun squarely on the head.

Incidentally, Xu Yun was quite familiar with this thing. He had played with it plenty of times as a child, though he had never had one slapped into his face.

It was called

cow dung.