In Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, the story opened with a theft at the British National Bank. According to the book, the bank trusted its customers' integrity so completely that it had neither guards nor a doorman. Even the tellers' counters lacked protective wire screens or glass windows. Banknotes were left lying around, meaning any customer could handle them however they pleased.
One British observer even recounted an incident: one day, in the British National Bank's main hall, he saw a gold ingot weighing seven or eight pounds sitting on a teller's counter. Curious, he picked it up for a look, then passed it to someone else. The ingot passed from hand to hand all the way to the end of a dark corridor, only returning to its original spot half an hour later. Throughout that half hour, the teller never once looked up.
Li Wei had no idea whether Verne had been writing some feel-good fluff about the British people's exemplary character or trying to prove something else, but fortunately, Delicate Bank wasn't that idiotic. If it had been, Li Wei would have turned around and left without another word. If they couldn't even keep an eye on their own money, they deserved to lose it. Besides, cases like that were practically unsolvable. Li Wei couldn't be bothered wasting time and brain cells on one. Wouldn't that just be making work for himself out of sheer boredom?
Fortunately, Delicate Bank was reasonably normal, rather than as insane as the one in the novel, so Li Wei did find this case interesting.
First, there was the sequence of events.
Delicate Bank was the largest bank in the Delicat District. It was somewhat similar to the Agricultural Bank, with grain trading and exchanges of gold and silver as its