Chapter 20

Following a theft at the school during the night, the leadership attached great importance to the incident, urging every class to carefully tally their property losses and tighten security to prevent any recurrence. Classes began reporting their losses one after another. The graduating class suffered the heaviest blow; apart from textbooks, their property losses were severe, with some even missing the brand-new cotton quilts they had just brought from home. Among the victims, the most heartbroken was Fang Yi, who had lost his most cherished martial arts manual. Although he had picked up this book years ago in a corner of his primary school, it had accompanied him for so many years and had long since become an essential part of his life. He was already familiar with a large majority of the martial arts techniques in the book, but a small fraction still remained unmastered. Now that it had been lost in such an inexplicable way, he was as anxious as an ant on a hot pan. He carefully checked his belongings again, and except for this book, everything else was still there. Why was only this book stolen? He could not figure it out.