Finally, they arrived at a garden behind the castle.
Though called a garden, it was more like a crudely tended courtyard. In the center was a slightly withered rose bush, with so hardy shrubs growing along the edges, along with a small patch of Snowball Flowers that blood in early sumr.
For an adult, the courtyard was not large, its layout clear at a glance. But for a six-year-old child, the intricate paths and waist-high bushes were enough to form a small world in which it was easy to get lost.
"Miss Cecilia, please wait here for a mont. I will go and fetch so refreshnts."
The Maid led her to a stone bench in the center of the courtyard. After speaking in a flat tone, she turned and walked away quickly without waiting for a response, her figure soon disappearing through the archway they had co from.
The courtyard instantly fell silent, leaving only the rustling of leaves in the wind.
Cecilia stood in place for a mont, confirming that the Maid had no intention of returning.
She knew very well this was an arrangent by Bernard the butler, or rather, the Forr Lady Baron. The intent was to make her, an outsider, feel isolated and helpless in this unfamiliar environnt—to ideally make her panic, leaving her with a psychological scar and providing them with sothing to mock.
Although the Maid had led her on a confusing path, she still clearly rembered the way back to the reception hall.
However, she knew that returning now would be pointless. She would only face a new round of harassnt.
So, she chose to stay put, sitting quietly on the stone bench. Her small figure looked particularly lonely in the empty courtyard.
Ti ticked by. She was only six, after all. And while her courage far surpassed that of her peers, even she found it hard to endure such a tedious wait.
Relying on her good mory, she began to walk cautiously along the edge of the path, her curious gaze sweeping over the sowhat desolate scenery.
Just as she rounded a dense, thorny bush, a rather remote corner deep in the courtyard caught her attention.
A man in a simple, dark-colored robe stood there.
He looked to be about thirty, with an upright posture. His back was to her as he focused on fiddling with so strange objects.
A heavy plumb bob hung from a high point. Below it was a shallow dish marked with fine gradations, filled with a bit of clear liquid. The tip of the plumb bob hovered just above the liquid’s surface, never quite touching it.
The man would periodically bend down, observing the subtle position of the plumb bob’s projection on the graduated dish with extre concentration, and would write sothing on a scroll of paper in his hand with a quill pen.
Cecilia stopped in her tracks, tilting her head. Her eyes were filled with confusion.
She couldn’t understand what this person was doing. She only felt that his actions were extrely peculiar, unlike the conduct of any noble or servant she had ever known.
After a mont’s hesitation, curiosity finally won out over her reserve.
She smoothed her skirt, took a few light steps forward, and stopped a few paces away from the man. Sowhat warily, she asked politely, "Excuse , may I ask what you are doing?"
Hearing her voice, Murphy slowly straightened up.
The mont Cecilia had stepped into the courtyard, he had already detected her with his superhuman perception and recognized her identity at a glance.
In this castle, besides Aurora, a girl of this age who was so pretty and lavishly dressed could only be Cecilia, who had recently returned from the Hans Viscount Domain.
Speaking of Aurora, the poor girl was currently in the midst of rigorous lessons arranged by the Forr Lady Baron, learning how to beco a qualified future Lord, and thus couldn’t cling to her dear older brother all the ti.
Murphy’s gaze fell upon Cecilia as he answered calmly, "I’m asuring whether the earth rotates."
The answer was completely beyond Cecilia’s expectations.
Her delicate eyebrows knitted slightly, her small face etched with confusion. "The earth... rotates?"
In her world, the earth was solid and unmoving, the center around which the stars and the Sun revolved.
"It’s just to test a hypothesis."
Murphy’s tone was placid. This was the new persona he had been carefully cultivating for Sylvan over the past few years.
Since becoming impotent, Sylvan’s forr persona as a debauched womanizer naturally needed to change.
He had long since confird through various inquiries that this sort of observation and exploration of natural phenona would never be considered dark arts by the Church Court.
After all, true dark arts involved wielding Supernatural Power, which was entirely different from his empirical research that relied on instrunts and observation.
In the eyes of the Church Court, he was, at most, a harmless scholar.
There was another important reason for this: he was simply too bored.
With the aid of the Knight’s Secret dicine, the ti he actually spent on Cultivation each day was limited.
Furthermore, the Forr Lady Baron had gradually taken over most of the administrative duties, leaving him with few official matters to handle.
Aurora always thought her older brother was very busy, but that was because he was always handling official business whenever she ca to find him after her lessons.
Besides, Murphy truly was lonely.
This loneliness stemd not only from his isolation in this world but also from the fear that his mories of his past life were gradually fading.
He was unwilling to let the traces of that Otherworld vanish completely. This, combined with his curiosity about the laws governing this new world, led him to start designing various simple experints using the physics and chemistry knowledge from his previous life.
He was attempting to verify the similarities and differences between this world’s fundantal physical laws and those of his forr one.
"Why would it rotate?"
Cecilia pressed, a rare glimr, unlike any before, shining in her overly calm eyes.
Murphy looked at the girl before him, who acted so mature yet couldn’t hide her childish curiosity, and suddenly found her rather interesting.
He pointed to the hanging plumb bob and the graduated dish. "Look at this plumb bob. It always points toward the center of the earth. If the earth were stationary, then no matter where we are, the direction it points should be fixed."
Cecilia nodded. The principle was simple enough.
Murphy’s tone shifted. "But, if the earth itself is rotating, then we on its surface are actually moving along with it. This plumb bob points to the center of the earth, but because the ground beneath us is moving, precise asurents might reveal that its orientation isn’t absolutely constant. It would show an extrely tiny, regular shift in response to our movent. This device I’ve designed is ant to amplify and observe that potential tiny shift."
He paused for a mont before continuing, "Think about it. If you were sitting in a smoothly moving carriage with your eyes closed, you might not feel the motion. But if you were to drop a stone out of the carriage, or carefully observe a hanging object inside, wouldn’t you find so clues proving that both you and the carriage are in motion? Right now, we might just be sitting on a giant carriage called Earth."
This analogy sent Cecilia into deep thought.
She tried to digest this subversive idea, her small head tilted slightly as she attempted to construct the image in her mind.
After a long while, she finally looked up. The confusion in her eyes hadn’t faded, but the glimr had grown a little brighter. "But, if the earth is rotating, why can’t we feel it? Why don’t things fly off? Why...?"
Murphy didn’t answer directly, but asked in return, "Just because you can’t feel it, does that an it doesn’t exist? You can’t see the wind, but you know it’s there by the rustling of the leaves. Many things aren’t real because they’re obvious; they need to be discovered through observation and thought."
He casually plucked a leaf from a nearby bush, let it go, and watched it spiral to the ground. "As for why things don’t fly off... perhaps it’s because there’s an invisible force, from the earth itself, that firmly attracts all things, just like a lodestone attracts iron filings. This attraction might be even stronger than we imagine, strong enough to overco what the rotation brings... hmm. In terms you can understand, it’s enough to hold everything firmly to the ground."
He didn’t use terms like "gravity" or "centrifugal force." Even so, he didn’t expect a six-year-old child to understand the physical principles involved. He didn’t even expect Cecilia to know what "a lodestone attracts iron filings" ant.
Cecilia looked at the leaf that had finally settled on the ground, then back at the still-swaying plumb bob, and was silent for a long ti.
The courtyard was still quiet, but a different kind of quietness—unlike the solitude from before—began to envelop her.
When she looked up at Murphy again, there was less wariness in her eyes and more pure curiosity.
"So... have you asured it? Is the earth actually moving or not?"
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