1665

"Hiss—That hurts."

After an unknown amount of time, Xu Yun slowly woke from the bed, rubbing his forehead with one hand and propping himself up with the other.

Wait, a bed?

Realizing something, Xu Yun hurriedly looked beneath himself—sure enough, he was lying on a bed.

It was an ordinary single bed, made entirely of wood, with a gray woolen blanket spread across it.

He then raised his head and looked around.

He was in a small but exceptionally well-lit wooden house, roughly thirty square meters in size.

Aside from the wooden bed he lay on, the room contained a wooden wardrobe, a desk, two stools, a recliner, and several lamps. A messy pile of clothes lay on the recliner.

One particularly distinctive item was a type of trousers resembling long stockings or tight pants. Xu Yun had learned about them in his elective Western history course—they were called Hussar pants.

The Hussar pants draped inside out over the chair exposed their lining, revealing scraps of cloth and leather, along with blackened wool. This had been perfectly normal in the seventeenth century. Hussar pants were typically lavish on the outside and a complete mess within—the legendary façade pants.

Some families with limited means but a deep concern for "respectability" even stuffed them with straw and chaff.

Don't ask. Gentlemen, that's why.

Besides that.

The crops and fence posts outside the window indicated that this room was on the ground floor. Combined with the structure of the eaves overhead, it was easy to tell that this was a single-story partitioned cottage.

Xu Yun then touched the most painful spot on his head and found that it had been simply wrapped with a bandage.

At this point, Xu Yun's memories still lingered on the black-covered book that had flown at his face. Yet judging from what he saw, someone had probably rescued him—seventy percent chance it was Newton, thirty percent chance it was some passerby.

After all, Old Master Newton's temperament was famously extreme. Even in this youthful version of himself, he was probably still rather drastic in how he handled things.

So it really could not be ruled out that he was a scumbag who knocked Xu Yun unconscious and then refused to take responsibility.

Still, judging by Newton's age and clothing, this was most likely before he was elected to the Royal Society in 1672—Xu Yun had seen the school badge on Newton's chest earlier.

In other words, this big shot had most likely not yet fallen out with Hooke. In the terms of local webnovels, the protagonist had not yet started fighting above his level, so he was relatively less of the arrogant type who challenged heaven and earth alike.

At the same time, a whole host of questions surfaced in Xu Yun's mind:

Clearly, this should have been sometime between 1660 and 1670.

Rebirth had already happened, so it was not impossible to accept that the mysterious halo had sent him to this era.

But the question was—

What year was it exactly?

What was the purpose of that door sending him to this point in time?

He had studied biology in this life, so why had he been sent to the side of a physics big shot?

Would what he did affect the future? For example, stabbing Newton?

And besides—

How was he supposed to get back?

Just as Xu Yun was puzzling over these questions, a screen of light suddenly appeared before him:

[Novice Mission: Heard you have a lot of things you can't let go of? Live a little more freely!]

[Mission Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆]

[Mission Requirements: Become friends with the young Isaac Newton in any sense of the word. Do not casually involve yourself in any historical events that you did not personally take part in.]

[Time Limit: Two months]

[Mission Reward: Determined by rating]

[Penalty for Failure: All female favorability in reality -1]

[Additional Note: This world is a parallel world with no connection to reality. Yet just as a dream in spring may leave faint traces upon the bedding, what you do may perhaps leave certain marks that transcend time and space.]

Xu Yun: ".?"

A parallel world, unrelated to reality?

In other words, the spacetime door he had entered counted as an instance dungeon?

I understand the logic, but why did this prompt feel so sketchy?

Could this thing have come from the City of Heavenly Rot?

Then, as he looked at the mission details, another thought suddenly rose in Xu Yun's mind:

Since failing the mission did not carry much of a penalty, what would happen if he ran back to his homeland at this point in time?

But before that thought had lasted even half a second, Xu Yun dismissed it himself:

First, the mission gave him far too little time. Second, he had neither power nor influence back home, so making a huge splash would be far too difficult.

Still, speaking of which.

The appearance of the mission had given Xu Yun a little information, but there were clearly still many secrets for him to investigate himself.

For instance, how exactly did the supposed rating system work? Did it involve people? Time? Or something else?

In short.

The fact of his rebirth had given Xu Yun an instinctive degree of acceptance toward surreal concepts like transmigration. Meanwhile, his initial shock gradually faded as he waited for Newton to wake.

Soon, a strong sense of excitement began to well up inside him.

After all, the other party was Newton—Old Master Newton himself.

Who had not seen how many people in his previous life had dreamed of helping press down his coffin lid?

And to complete this mission, one crucial point was—

Determining the exact current date!

All signs indicated that it was definitely before 1672—Newton formally entered the Royal Society of London in 1672, developed a grudge against Hooke over the reflecting telescope, and from then on changed from merely aloof to unruly and even violent.

Thus, Newton at this time was still a proud young man with a withdrawn personality, but at least academically, he was nowhere near being an entrenched authority.

But merely determining an approximate time was not enough. After all, in his youth, Newton practically had a different personality and set of accomplishments every year.

Especially during those unusual eighteen months.

As for the precise date—

Xu Yun suddenly thought of the Apple Tree he had fallen from.

While waiting for Newton to wake, Xu Yun had briefly surveyed the surroundings.

He had discovered that this was clearly a small village, and that the apple trees nearby had basically all borne ripe fruit.

As everyone knew.

Britain was rather unusual when it came to apple cultivation. For over a thousand years, it had cultivated only one kind of cooking apple, called the Bramley apple.

The concentration of malic acid in this apple far exceeded its sugar content, so even after cooking, it retained a rich apple flavor.

These apples ripened around late October, far later than the usual July to September apple harvest season back home.

And coincidentally, Xu Yun had taken courses at Cambridge for a year in his previous life, so he knew Trinity College's holiday schedule:

Trinity College began its summer vacation each year from June to August, observed an unchanging Christmas holiday from December 6 to January 15, and then held another break of around three weeks in March.

Therefore, the time when Bramley apples ripened was clearly during Trinity College's academic term.

Furthermore, as an elite academic, Newton had never missed even a single day of university. In truth, the main reason for this was that Old Master Newton had been dirt poor before joining the Mint.

Even between late 1667 and 1669, when he was awarded the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, he was still studying theology at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Thus, looking over Newton's life after university and before 1672, there was only one event that could have made him leave London in August:

The Great Plague of London—the Black Death!

And during the eighteen months Newton spent away from London, the latter half was spent at Humphrey Babington's home—a cotton estate where no apples were grown.

Therefore, there was only one time that fit the current conditions.

October 1665, eight months after the plague appeared!

Newton's accomplishments during this period were—

We'll talk about that next chapter.