Li Wei switched on the lights and examined the scene before him.
The entire editorial office was a wreck, as though a war had swept through it.
Or rather, it had been a war.
Bullet holes and bloodstains covered the walls. The glass was shattered, and bodies lay everywhere.
Li Wei walked around the scene and soon reconstructed what had happened.
Clearly, the staff had been working at the time, everyone busy at their desks.
Then a group of people had walked in.
The visitors had plainly come with hostile intentions. The editorial staff seemed to have realized something was wrong, but the intruders had opened fire first.
Mostly with shotguns and handguns.
Li Wei quickly reached that conclusion from the bullet holes. Those were also the firearms most readily available to citizens of the Empire: shotguns for hunting, handguns for self-defense. Most gun shops sold only those two types.
As for machine guns and the like... even if you dared to buy one, the shopkeeper wouldn't dare sell it.
In short, the first volley had caught the editorial staff completely off guard. More than half had fallen in that initial attack. The positions of their bodies showed that they hadn't even had time to seek cover before being shot dead.
Then the survivors had returned fire... and this part was more interesting.
Li Wei frowned slightly as he examined the bodies farther back.
The editorial staff were surely all members of Military Intelligence Section Seven, all professionally trained. They had almost immediately dived behind cabinets and returned fire. In theory, even if they couldn't drive the attackers back, they should at least have disrupted their advance. Then they could have taken the opportunity to call the police or something, and perhaps held out until reinforcements arrived.
But the attackers