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

Fairfa picked up his glass, took a sip, and chuckled, "Gibbens wouldn't attend a party like this."

Su Zhou understood.

No matter how meritorious Gibbons was, he was not qualified to attend banquets of the upper class.

In this high society built on lineage, titles, and enormous wealth, gentlemen wear extravagant wigs worth a fortune, and ladies wear expensive corsets that could break their waists. The topics they discuss are never something a Whitehall Palace doorman would understand.

Su Zhou couldn't empathize with this innate sense of superiority. He temporarily put aside Gibbons' matter and began to focus on dinner.

The roasted lamb chops, freshly served on a silver platter, were still steaming hot, cut into thick chunks with crispy edges and juices soaking into a dark sauce.

He cut off a small piece with a knife and put it in his mouth.

The taste was surprisingly good.

The complex aroma of smoke and spices explodes on the tongue, with the spiciness of pepper, the sweetness of cloves, and a hint of red wine sauce.

Su Zhou had a gut feeling that this stuff wasn't cheap, so ignoring everyone's stares, he ate a few more pieces.

After all, Newton didn't have such a good thing at home!

Halfway through the meal, Newton suddenly stood up and winked at Su Zhou.

Under the pretext of refilling water, the two walked to the fireplace in the corner of the dining room. Newton lowered his voice and said, "Sue, why are you so interested in that John Gibbons? He's just a doorman at Whitehall Palace."

Su Zhou's mind raced.

The historical information he had browsed online before he came contained very little about Gibbons, just a single sentence.

Gibbons is Charonnay's inside man, ostensibly a loyal doorman for Whitehall Palace, but secretly he helps the counterfeit money gang tip off their associates.

But even this little bit of information is enough for him to put on a show.

He feigned deep thought and said in a low voice, "Mr. Newton, I've received some inside information about Gibbons and Charonnay."

Newton glanced around. The banquet hall was filled with laughter and chatter, but there were always a few malicious eyes peering in from the corners. Newton made a quick decision: "It's not safe here. Let's go home and talk about it later."

The carriage bumped along in the damp, cold London night fog, and by the time it arrived back at Newton's house, it was already late at night.

Su Zhou lit the fireplace in the living room, and the firelight barely dispelled the chill.

"Sir, I don't know much either," Su Zhou said bluntly.

"John Gibbons is a Charonna man. On the surface, he guards the Whitehall Palace, but secretly he helps the counterfeiters cover their tracks and pass on messages. His special status and official background allow him to freely enter and exit sensitive places without arousing suspicion."

Newton excitedly raised a hand, waved it, and said, "I knew it!"

"His identity is indeed perfect for covering up for criminals. I've suspected him for a long time. The Whitehall Palace gatekeepers are nominally extremely loyal, but in reality, they have access to internal intelligence about the mint and the circulation of paper money... This location is practically a hiding place for rats!"

"If we can find Gibbons' weakness, we can follow the clues and uncover that bastard Charona's trump card!"

"But it's too late today, let's rest for the night and conserve our energy, then we'll go and meet this gatekeeper tomorrow morning."

Su Zhou nodded in strong agreement.

In the 17th century, without modern surveillance and fingerprint identification technology, the best way to bring down a highly intelligent criminal boss was to target his associates.

The other party probably didn't even realize they had their eyes on him.

When Su Zhou returned to her room, the corners of her mouth couldn't help but turn up in a smile.

He ate his fill of roasted meat and desserts at the banquet tonight, and his body felt warm and cozy. He wasn't shivering from the cold like he had a few days ago. Soon, he lay down on the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

At 5:30 a.m., Newton's relentless, death-defying knocking on the door shattered Su Zhou's sweet dreams.

With his messy, unkempt hair, Su Zhou followed the big shot out the door, utterly dejected.

The two of them easily found a place to eat at Lily's Diner and then headed straight for Whitehall Palace.

The fog had not completely dissipated in front of the side gate of Whitehall Palace.

The guard, who was leaning lazily against the wall, barely straightened up and bowed when he saw Newton's carriage. Newton then showed the Royal Mint emblem: "Looking for John Gibbons, it's important."

The guard immediately stood at attention and said, "Gibbons? He's on duty in the backyard... Should I call him over?"

"No."

The two walked through the damp stone corridor, their footsteps echoing clearly under the vaulted ceiling, and around the last corner, John Gibbons stood there.

He was a man in his early forties, with a stocky build.

He had just finished a night of heavy drinking and was leaning against a huge stone pillar at the side entrance of Whitehall Palace, yawning without restraint.

When Newton expressionlessly revealed the badge of the Royal Mint, Gibbons' drowsiness vanished instantly, and he reflexively put on an extremely obsequious smile, his massive body hunching over humbly.

"Oh my, Mr. Newton, I never expected such a great man as you to condescend to come to a place like this." Gibbons nodded and bowed with a smile.

"Mr. Gibbons, I've heard that you're a rare expert in investigating counterfeit money. You played a major role in successfully cracking the first batch of counterfeit banknotes at the Bank of England," Newton said without any pleasantries.

Gibbons was visibly taken aback, then gave a forced smile and replied, "This is all done in service of His Majesty the Great King."

Newton continued, "Did you notify anyone at the time?"

"I told the person in charge first, and then the news got back up to higher levels," Gibbons replied succinctly.

"name."

Gibbons paused, his smile unchanged: "It's been too long, I can't remember clearly."

"You don't remember the case from two years ago?" Newton looked at him.

Gibbons coughed lightly: "As people get older, their memory starts to fail."

Newton frowned, and Su Zhou quickly said, "Then you must remember Charona, right?"

Gibbons turned to look at him, touching his nose with his half-broken index finger.

"Mr. Charona? Of course I remember. Who wouldn't remember such a famous person?"

Are you familiar with each other?

"Not very familiar with each other."

"How many times have we met?"

"I've seen it a few times in London, so it's not unusual."

"It's normal not to remember." Su Zhou nodded, as if to make amends for him, "But you should at least remember how you discovered that batch of counterfeit banknotes in the first place, right?"

"News I heard."

"Who told you that?"

"Sir, I have my own channels." Gibbons originally didn't want to deal with Su Zhou, but unfortunately, the other party was the soon-to-be-appointed supervisor.

He couldn't understand why an Asian could hold a high-ranking position in the mint.

Have the lawmakers lost their minds?

Newton stared at him: "Be honest, I don't want to hear this nonsense."

Forced into a corner, Gibbons had no choice but to shift his gaze away from Su Zhou, cough twice, and continue speaking in his usual slick tone: "My lords, most of the time my information is true, so I dare not reveal it lightly."

"Recently, there have been a few people secretly making counterfeit money. I suspect they are remnants of the group from two years ago. I'm not being nosy, but there is one person in that group who is the most suspicious. He used to run a small workshop in Southwark, and his skills were very shady. He specialized in taking jobs from dubious sources."

"As a security guard, this is all I know. If you really want to get to the bottom of this, you need to see more solid evidence."

Newton narrowed his eyes and immediately pressed, "Just this one? What's the name? Where's the evidence?"

Gibbons forced a smile, but his back unconsciously bent half an inch: "Sir, if you say any more... my life won't be worth much."

"As for specific evidence, I still have a few of the confiscated documents at home. If you two gentlemen trust me, please come to my house first thing tomorrow morning, and I will bring them all out. My house is in a small alley by the river; you can find it with just a few questions."

His eyes swept over Newton and Su Zhou's faces before he said cautiously, "Of course, I'm just a nobody who's done a huge favor, so I should get something in return, right? Consider it... a little reward for my trouble."

Newton's face instantly darkened, and he was about to explode when Su Zhou spoke first, saying, "Okay, we'll provide the benefits. Prepare the evidence tomorrow."

Gibbons' eyes lit up, and he bowed even lower: "Thank you, gentlemen."

As the two turned to leave Whitehall, Gibbons was still bowing and scraping behind them as they saw them off.

As the carriage entered the morning mist, Newton lowered his voice and said, "That shameless scoundrel dared to extort us to our faces! Sue, why did you let him get away with it?"

Su Zhou drew upon his limited life experience, saying, "Mr. Newton, things that can be solved with money aren't really problems. In our Eastern culture, there's a saying: 'Money makes the world go round!'"

After Su Zhou finished speaking, he turned his head and saw that Newton was frowning deeply.

"Su, there is a very serious logical flaw in your statement."

Newton finally spoke: "Suppose a ghost is a spiritual substance lacking a physical entity, then its mass should be zero. According to my second law of motion, an object with zero mass cannot generate any effective force. How could it overcome the enormous static friction at the bottom of a heavy millstone and move in a circular motion?"

Su Zhou was so taken aback by this barrage of hard-hitting questions that he almost vomited up the bread he had eaten for breakfast.

Newton was completely absorbed in his scientific world and paid no attention to Su Zhou.

"Even if this kind of Eastern spiritual body has an extremely small mass, the money you mentioned only has economic attributes and negligible gravitational potential energy."

"If you place a gold coin in front of a millstone, there's absolutely no way that this weak potential energy could be converted into energy to drive the spirit to do mechanical work, unless the special luster of gold and silver can stimulate some unknown electromagnetic induction within the spirit?"

Su Zhou felt that his remaining common sense about physics was being mercilessly crushed by the ancestor of physics.

But Newton wouldn't let him off the hook; he kept talking all the way to the mint.

Unable to withstand the mental pollution of this patriarch's physics, Su Zhou quickly slipped away into the mint workshop.

As a prospective supervisor, Su Zhou had legitimate reasons for wandering around, so no one dared to ask him if he was working.

After wandering around all day, Su Zhou and Newton had dinner and went home first. Newton, on the other hand, didn't return until very late because he had to deal with official business. By then, Su Zhou was already asleep.

……

The next morning, Newton knocked on the door at 5:30 as usual.

When Su Zhou got out of bed, her feelings were very complicated.

London is cold, the bed is cold, and Newton is very unfair.

He followed Newton out, feeling utterly hopeless. After finishing their hot porridge at Lily's Diner, the two headed straight for the alley Gibbons had mentioned.

Su Zhou sat in the carriage, having already prepared her lines in her mind.

When we meet, we need to find a way to verify whether the evidence he provides is fake, lest Newton pays money and receives false evidence.

If that were to happen, Newton would probably be grumbling about it for ages.

As the carriage turned into the alley, Su Zhou suddenly smelled a pungent, burnt odor.

"The Gibbons house is on fire! Help!"

Newton quickly stopped the carriage.