Chasing Time

“Next, we have the most noble recipient of the Order of the Garter, the Grand Cross of Saint Michael and Saint George, the Grand Cross of the Bath, the Victoria Cross and the lower grades of Knighthood, the leader of the anti-colonial movement, the bell-ringer of the East India Company, the hero of the Crimean War, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a lifelong dear friend of literary giants such as Dickens and Great Dumas, a steadfast supporter of scientific luminaries like Faraday and Darwin, having served as assistant under-secretary, deputy under-secretary, and permanent under-secretary in departments of the Home Office and the Navy Department of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the inaugural Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service, the first graduate and most distinguished alumnus of our school. Please welcome Sir Arthur Hastings to deliver a speech on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University of London.”
Arthur's gaze swept across the crowd before him, looking at the young faces and murmured, “Agares, what do you think I should say?”
The Red Devil's wraith hovered behind him, saliva almost dribbling from the corner of his mouth, “Look at these ignorant souls; they still worship you as a hero. Why not say something they'd like to hear?”
Arthur took a deep breath and let out a deafening roar, “Oxford is a bunch of whores' bastards!”
“Oh!!!!”
The audience erupted into thunderous applause.
“Cambridge is the same!” he added immediately.
The applause grew even more fervent...
(The protagonist, possessed by a devil, travels through 19th-century Britain in a world without magic)

The Shadow of Great Britain

Britain, as an island nation founded on commercial trade, boasted countless good harbors nationwide, but during the medieval period, Britain's most important ports came from the southeast region. The representative cities were the founding ports of the Cinque Ports: Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney, and Hastings.


The Cinque Ports, facing France across the English Channel, just a channel's breadth away and backed by the fertile plains of south-eastern England with their gentle coastlines easy to dock at, naturally became Britain's prime choice for foreign trade during the scientifically undeveloped Middle Ages.


By the time of the Renaissance, with the development of America, the rise of the slave trade, the merger of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain, the onset of the first industrial revolution, and the expansion of Far East transshipment trade, the small fishing village of Liverpool in the southwest of Britain finally welcomed its golden age of development.


Chapter 283: Liverpool, the Major Commercial Port