97: Physics no longer exists? Sir Richard Burke: Yes, I said so!

Three days after the CCG EXPO convention incident ended.

The United Kingdom, Cambridge University, Trinity College.

The afternoon sunlight filtered through the courtyard of the ancient college, falling upon a lush Apple tree.

A history student named Tom was holding up his phone, livestreaming this very Apple tree.

“Hey guys, see this? This is the descendant of that legendary Apple tree. This is where Newton was hit on the head by an Apple and then came up with universal gravitation.”

Tom introduced it to the several hundred viewers in the livestream in a typical tourist check-in tone.

“Of course, this isn't the original; the original is long gone. But the school says this was grown using grafting techniques, so the lineage is pure.”

The bullet comments in the livestream drifted by sparsely.

[Checking in from the front row]

[So? Can it help me pass physics?]

[The streamer should take a bite and see if he can suddenly understand relativity.]

Tom chuckled and was about to say something more.

Just then, in his livestream camera, a greenish Apple detached from the branch because it was overripe.

It did not fall down.

The Apple remained stationary in mid-air for a second.

Then, violating the laws considered universal truths for over three hundred years, it began to slowly fly upwards.

The speed wasn't fast, but it was unwavering.

Passing through the gaps in the leaves, it rose higher and higher, eventually becoming a small dot and disappearing between the azure sky and sparse clouds.

At that moment, the bullet comments in the livestream came to a complete standstill.

[????]

[Holy crap?]

[Special effects? The streamer found a good post-production team.]

[It's a script, right? Is there a drone inside the Apple?]

Tom's mind went blank. He stiffly looked up, staring blankly in the direction the Apple disappeared, just like the other tourists taking photos under the tree.

The sky was empty.

A breeze blew, rustling the leaves; everything was terrifyingly normal.

Just as everyone thought they were experiencing a collective hallucination.

A man wearing a 17th-century scholar's robe and a silver curly wig slowly stepped out from behind that Apple tree.

The man looked to be about fifty years old, with a serious expression and a majestic aura.

He leaned on a black cane with a transparent prism embedded at the top.

His appearance created a strong sense of dissonance with the surrounding modern environment of T-shirts and jeans.

An old professor present, a doctoral supervisor from Cambridge's Faculty of History, subconsciously took out his phone and pulled up a portrait stored in his album.

The person in the painting was identical to the man who had stepped out from behind the tree, except one was an oil painting and the other was a real person.

The old professor's hands began to shake, and his phone almost fell to the ground.

The man ignored the stunned crowd around him.

He walked under the Apple tree and looked up at the direction the Apple had just flown away.

Then, he turned toward Tom's still-streaming phone camera and spoke calmly in pure English with a 17th-century royal accent.

“Isaac Newton.”

“Summoned by the ‘Holy Grail’, Class: Rider.”

This short sentence was clearly transmitted into the ears of everyone in the livestream via the network signal.

The scene fell into a deathly silence.

Tom even forgot to breathe.

Newton.

He said he is Newton.

The man seemed completely indifferent to the crowd's reaction; it was within his expectations.

Isaac Newton raised the cane in his hand and pointed it toward the distant sky.

In the next second, an even more incredible sight occurred.

The stationary, cotton-like clouds in the sky began to slowly rotate at a speed visible to the naked eye.

At first, it was just a tiny vortex.

Soon, the range of the vortex continued to expand, and the rotation speed grew faster and faster.

All the clouds within a radius of several kilometers were drawn in, forming a massive and spectacular white whirlpool above Cambridge University.

Sunlight passed through the center of the whirlpool, casting a divine pillar of light that happened to envelop Isaac Newton.

“F = G * (m1*m2)/r².”

Isaac Newton spoke again.

“It is merely an application of the formula.”

After saying that, he lowered his cane.

The cloud whirlpool in the sky also stopped rotating, freezing into a soul-stirring apocalyptic tableau.

Finally, Isaac Newton announced his schedule to the world through that small phone camera.

“Two days from now.”

“I will give a public lecture here, at the site of the old Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University.”

“The theme is... some corrections to modern physics.”

...Less than ten minutes after the incident, the UK government's rapid response force sealed off the entire Trinity College, and the lockdown later expanded to the entire core area of Cambridge.

But it was already too late.

The livestream recording titled ‘The Apple Ascends, Newton Returns’ was edited, downloaded, and backed up by countless netizens, then subtitled in dozens of different languages and frantically uploaded to every mainstream media outlet, short video platform, and academic forum globally.

The internet exploded.

#Newton's coffin lid can't be held down#

Within just half an hour, this topic climbed to the number one spot on the trending lists of all social media worldwide at an unprecedented speed.

“I declare this the strongest performance art of the year, bar none!”

“To the person above, didn't you see the Apple fly away? Didn't you see the clouds turning? This is the fucking Holy Grail War! It's the man himself!”

“So, the physics we've studied for the past three hundred years was built on a... well, temporary theoretical basis that could be retracted by the author at any time?”

“Physics teachers destroyed all their textbooks overnight and stated: ‘Lord Newton is right about everything!’”

“Apple Inc. might be the biggest loser; the theoretical basis for their logo is gone.”

“What I'm more concerned about is, Newton's Class is Rider? What does he ride? Does he fly through the sky riding an Apple?”

“No, he rides gravity! Didn't you hear? F = G * (m1*m2)/r²! He's using his own law as a mount! What an insane flex!”

“Now it's great, physicists all over the world are going to be unemployed. The original author has personally entered the fray; what hope is there for you guys writing fanfiction papers?”

“I can almost see it now, two days later at the entrance of the Cavendish Laboratory, Hawking's wheelchair driving itself out of the grave, followed by Einstein running and shouting: ‘Master Newton, stop changing it! If you change it any more, quantum mechanics won't even be self-consistent!’”

On the internet, memes and jokes about Newton refreshed at a frantic rate of tens of thousands per second.

Some people Photoshopped Newton's head onto various ‘Return of the King’ movie posters.

Others made ‘Physics Status’ memes: Schrödinger's cat, Zeno's tortoise, and Newton's Apple, with the caption: Today is another day of nuclear peace.

Behind this carnival was a deep, disruptive impact on the basic perception of the world.

If even universal gravitation can be casually twisted by its discoverer.

Then what else in this world is certain?

The foundations of science are being personally pried apart by the founder of science.

This shock, striking at the very core of one's worldview, made countless people feel an unprecedented sense of absurdity and confusion, which they ultimately could only cover up with mockery and deconstruction.

And beneath this global internet carnival, an undercurrent was surging.

Intelligence agencies and high-level government officials of countless countries felt a bone-chilling cold.

The strategic deterrent of a person who can manipulate the laws of physics even exceeds Uchiha Madara's meteorites.

Within twelve hours.

That Nobel Prize nominee from the MIT Physics Department, the tenured professor who published ‘Preliminary Conjectures on “Conceptual Solidification” and “Authority Extension” as Hyper-dimensional Physical Phenomena’, updated his status on his personal Twitter.

“I will retract all previous conjectures regarding ‘mora’, because a more fundamental, deeper ghost of physics has returned from its grave.”

“I have booked a flight to Cambridge. If God truly exists, then I hope to witness with my own eyes how He re-legislates for this universe.”

This post instantly ignited the entire academic world.

The world's top physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers could no longer sit still after seeing that livestream recording and their colleague's tweet.

Through various official or private channels, they flocked from all over the world to that British town already blockaded by the military, at any cost.

They were going on a pilgrimage.

Or rather, they were going to witness how the knowledge system they had spent their lives learning was being personally overturned by its creator.