At the Scene, I Was That Apple (Please Bookmark!!)

In the 21st Century where Xu Yun lived, even elementary school students had heard a story like this:

Several hundred years ago, one day, Newton suddenly felt inspired for some unknown reason and ran beneath an Apple Tree to ponder life.

Then an apple smacked into his head, and this physics prodigy seemed to have his Ren and Du Meridians unblocked by the blow, leading him to propose the Law of Universal Gravitation.

For instance, Trinity College at Cambridge University still preserved the dormitory where Newton had lived as a student. Open the window, and one could see an Apple Tree.

Cambridge publicly claimed that it was a descendant of the famous apple that had struck Newton on the head—the John Bull Historical Society had even named that tree one of its hundred famous trees.

But in reality, both the location and the course of events behind this story were highly disputed.

One relatively mainstream view held that Newton had conceived of the Law of Universal Gravitation while hiding from the plague in his hometown of Woolsthorpe, and that he had most likely been sitting beneath a Chestnut Tree.

Imagine it.

If our badass ancestor Newton had really been struck in his sexy curls by a spiky chestnut

then the Law of Universal Gravitation would probably have been proposed from a hospital bed.

Still, some people firmly opposed this view.

Stukeley, who had personally interviewed Newton; the Gallic philosopher Voltaire; John Condit, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and the husband of his niece; Newton's niece Barton; Christopher Dawson; and others all claimed that Newton had personally mentioned an Apple Tree.

With so many people corroborating the matter, the truth behind the whole Apple Tree incident became increasingly murky.

Thus, the relatively objective conclusion at present was that Newton had seen an apple fall while hiding from the plague in his hometown, but had most likely not been struck on the head.

But no matter how fiercely people debated the matter back home, Xu Yun very much wanted to say something in Bihou style at that moment:

At the scene, Newton really was hit by an apple, because I was that apple.

And while he was at it, he wanted to ask for help with a question:

What should I do if the apple was too big and seems to have knocked Newton unconscious?!

Young Isaac Newton felt somewhat dazed. The ground was hard, and a dull ache came faintly from his back.

About a year earlier, a massive outbreak of plague had suddenly erupted in London.

The plague spread outward from London. The John Bull Royal Family fled the city, while the wealthy residents within it hurriedly escaped with their families.

The residents of Cambridge loaded their belongings onto carriages and evacuated to the countryside.

More than ten thousand houses in London had been abandoned. Some had their doors and windows nailed shut with pine boards, while homes containing patients were marked with red chalk crosses.

Cambridge University, not far from London, had been forced to suspend classes. The campus was closed, and teachers and students alike were evacuated to the countryside.

Newton, who had only recently earned his bachelor's degree, was forced to haul a cart full of books and instruments back to his family farm in Lincolnshire to escape the plague.

The farm in his hometown of Woolsthorpe was as tranquil as paradise. His mother warmly welcomed him, and his three half-siblings had become more sensible than before. Fine, he couldn't keep making this up.

In short.

Woolsthorpe truly was so quiet that it seemed cut off from the world, but Newton's family relationships were genuinely terrible.

Before Newton was born, his father, Old Isaac, had died of illness, leaving only his mother Hannah behind.

And when Newton was only three, Hannah decided to remarry a man roughly thirty years her senior—Nabas Smith.

Interestingly, Smith had an unusual way of proposing:

The two had never met. He sent a servant with a proposal letter, asking Hannah to marry him.

After family discussions, Hannah ultimately decided to abandon three-year-old Little Ox and move in with Smith.

A truly wonderful mother.

Eight years later, Smith died. Eleven-year-old Newton was brought back to Hannah's home, and according to Hannah's wishes, the best path for his future was to become a farmer.

If not for the help of his uncle and the middle school principal, Newton would eventually have become a scholarship student.

By now, Newton could practically drop the "ton" from his name.

Therefore, after returning home because of the epidemic, Newton was not particularly friendly toward his mother and siblings.

Early that morning, Newton had once again argued with Hannah over plowing the fields. Feeling frustrated, he took a book and prepared to go behind a stone wall he often visited on the estate to work through a few math problems.

The previous year, he had discovered a simple method for expanding binomials into series, but he was stuck on simplifying the binomial (P+PQ)^m/n.

Though he vaguely had some ideas, he simply could not break through that final barrier, and young Newton had quite a headache.

As he walked along, Newton suddenly noticed faint noises coming from an Apple Tree not far away.

It was broad daylight, so Newton had no misgivings as he walked beneath the tree, intending to see whether some small animal was up there.

Before he could even raise his head, however, he felt something land on his back. His vision immediately went black, and he completely lost consciousness.

Hm? Consciousness?

Realizing that he could clearly perceive feedback from his body and that his mind could think and recall normally, Newton immediately opened his eyes.

The moment he lifted his eyelids, he saw a man's face.

It was a face somewhat different from European appearance: black hair, black eyes, and features less sharply defined than those of Westerners, relatively gentle in contour.

Here was a bit of trivia.

Due to his unusual family circumstances, Newton had often been mocked by his classmates at school and had even been bullied quite a few times.

For most people, there were no more than two ways to deal with that:

Either endure it silently, or go tell the teacher.

But Newton chose a third option—becoming a school bully himself and hurting others in return.

Thus, when it came to fighting, Newton was basically the boxing champion among his peers, roughly on Li Jingliang's level.

Moreover, with the plague raging at the time, many refugees had become destabilizing factors.

So after coming to his senses, Newton paid no attention whatsoever to the healthy look on the man's face before him, nor did he carefully take in that concerned gaze.

Instead, as if driven by muscle memory, he casually grabbed a book beside him and smashed it straight at the man.

The book was called the Holy Bible. It was about five centimeters thick, with a gilded hard metal cover, and weighed

1.56 kilograms.

And so.

With a resounding smack, Xu Yun fell to the ground.