I control the AI ​​empire thanks to the geniuses in my group.

Su Zhou knew he needed to stay calm.

He has been wronged, and now it is time to prove that.

But how do we prove it?

Charona didn't give him time to think.

"To substantiate my allegations, I request the committee to call a witness."

The chairman nodded in agreement.

The witness was brought in.

He was a man in his early twenties, wearing a mint worker's uniform, with a tense expression and shifty eyes.

Charona walked up to him and said gently, "Please tell the committee your name and your position at the mint."

"James Hawkins, a furnace worker at the mint, has been doing this for four years."

"Yes, Mr. Hawkins, please recall, three nights ago, around nine o'clock, what did you see near the die storage room at the mint?"

Hawkins swallowed hard, his voice trembling slightly. "I...I saw that Asian man, it was him."

He pointed at Su Zhou: "He came out of the mold storage room, holding a stack of papers, like some kind of blueprints or something."

Charona pressed, "Are you sure it's him?"

"Confirmed. That face is too easy to recognize. He's the only Asian face in the mint."

The whispers in the hearing room turned into open discussion.

The way the councilors looked at Su Zhou was no longer friendly at all.

That's really well written.

If Su Zhou had actually worked at the mint for several months, this argument would be hard to refute.

But the problem is that he only traveled here six days ago!

Is Charona trying to mess with him because he's Japanese?

Originally, the hearing was planned to be led by Newton, but now Newton has to listen to him.

Su Zhou raised his head and looked at the chairman.

"Mr. Chairman, may I respond?"

The chairman nodded.

Su Zhou stood up. He didn't look at Charona or the witnesses, but faced the six members of the committee directly.

"Gentlemen, I would like to ask Mr. Hawkins, the witness, a question first."

Su Zhou turned to Hawkins, her tone calm.

"Mr. Hawkins, you said you saw me coming out of the mold storage room around nine o'clock three days ago."

"Yes, yes."

"You said you saw me holding a stack of blueprints. What color was the paper? What size was it? Was it rolled up or unfolded?"

"this……"

"Which direction did I come from? Should I turn left or right? Is there anyone else in the corridor?"

"I don't remember."

"Is the oil lamp by the door of the mold storage room hanging on the left or right wall?"

"Uh, I don't know."

"That's enough!"

Seeing that things were not going well, Charona stood up.

"Mr. Chairman, the defendant is interfering with the witness with a barrage of questions, which is not in accordance with the norms of a hearing!"

"I did not interfere with the witness."

Su Zhou turned to the chairman: "I am just verifying the credibility of the testimony. If Mr. Hawkins really saw everything he described with his own eyes, these questions should be no problem for him."

The chairman hesitated for a moment, then nodded and said, "Continue."

Charona's lips twitched slightly, and he slowly sat back down.

Su Zhou looked at Hawkins again.

At this point, Hawkins' forehead was already sweating profusely, glistening with sweat, and his lips were trembling slightly.

Under Su Zhou's barrage of detailed questions, Hawkins began to panic, and from an outsider's perspective, Hawkins' credibility also dropped considerably.

But Su Zhou knew that saying all that wasn't enough.

Because he did go to the mold storage room.

Even if Hawkins isn't a witness, there will be a second or third person to accuse him.

He needs to provide a reasonable explanation for why it appeared near the mold storage room.

"Fellow councilors," Su Zhou turned to the committee, "I do not deny that I visited the area where the mold storage room is located."

These words immediately created a tense atmosphere in the hearing room.

Newton frowned slightly.

He hadn't expected Su Zhou to admit it so readily.

Several councilors also showed obvious surprise, with one of them, a fat councilor with a red nose, even leaning forward as if afraid he had misheard.

Charona's eyes narrowed slightly, and a smile returned to the corners of his mouth.

Well, the foolish Easterner has finally let it slip.

The councilors definitely won't let you leave easily now!

"The reason is simple: Mr. Newton is conducting a full audit of the mint's accounts."

His gaze swept over every member of parliament present.

"All the records of inbound and outbound transactions, furnace loss data, and metal purity test reports from the past three years must be cross-checked with the original documents item by item. This work involves every department of the mint, including the mold storage room, smelting workshop, testing laboratory, and finished product warehouse."

He paused.

"Some departments had messy original files and some data was missing. The bookkeepers had to go to each department to check and fill in the missing data. In order to ensure the accuracy of the data and the fairness of the audit process, Mr. Newton assigned me to follow the bookkeepers throughout the process and supervise every step."

Su Zhou looked at the chairman.

"In other words, I was near the die storage room precisely because I was fulfilling the duties Mr. Newton assigned to me. If that counts as a crime, then every bookkeeper in the mint should be sitting here on trial."

The red-nosed, chubby congressman couldn't help but ask, "What evidence do you have for this audit you're talking about?"

coming.

This is exactly what Su Zhou was waiting for.

He turned to look at Newton.

Although Newton could not speak on behalf of the person involved, answering direct questions from members of parliament was not within the scope of the ban.

The chairman understood this as well; he looked at Newton and nodded slightly.

Newton stood up and picked up the stack of documents that had been prepared beforehand from the table.

"This is the complete record of this audit."

"Including the date of issuance of audit instructions, the list of participants, daily work logs, and copies of all verified original vouchers, Mr. Su's name appeared in the supervisor column every day, and there were corresponding sign-in records and bookkeepers' joint confirmations for every department he visited."

The document was distributed to each member of parliament.

The red-nosed, chubby congressman flipped through a couple of pages, then looked up: "The data is compiled very clearly, but I want to see the actual audit results. How is the mint actually operating?"

Su Zhou picked up the second document from the table and opened it in front of everyone. The eyes of the congressman closest to him visibly lit up.

Because he saw something he had never seen before.

The first page of the document was not a densely packed table of numbers, but a bar chart drawn with different shades of ink for comparison.

The horizontal axis represents the years: 1694, 1695, and 1696.

The vertical axis represents the number of coins minted, with each thousand coins serving as a unit of measurement.

Five long, distinct bars of varying heights are neatly arranged on the coordinate axis, with precise numbers clearly marked in handwriting next to them.

Below the bar chart, there is a dashed line that tracks the trend of metal loss rate during the same period.

In the lower right corner of the chart, there is a line of small print: The data comes from the original accounts of the Royal Mint and was personally verified by Superintendent Newton.

The red-nosed, chubby senator looked at the picture over and over again, his expression shifting from confusion to curiosity, and then from curiosity to an almost greedy interest.

"What is this?" he asked, holding up the picture.

"Data visualization charts," Su Zhou said.

"Data what?"

"A method for turning numbers into pictures."

Su Zhou put it more bluntly: "When you gentlemen review reports, you are faced with page after page of numbers, which gives you a headache and makes it easy to miss key information. But if you turn these numbers into graphs, the trends and comparisons will be clear at a glance."

He pointed to the bar chart.

"For example, this picture, without any professional knowledge, can be seen at a glance that since Mr. Newton took over, the minting output has increased year by year, the metal loss rate has decreased year by year, and the efficiency of the mint is not chaotic and inefficient as Mr. Charonna said, but is at the best level in history."

Then the young councilor spoke up: "Did you draw this chart?"