With Li Yufeng dead, the pent-up frustration and hatred in Luffy’s heart dissipated into thin air. Although there were still survivors in the hotel, they no longer piqued his interest. Whether they lived or died was entirely irrelevant to him now.
He had stayed here for nearly a month. It was time to leave.
He wanted to go home—back to the "home" that still held the warmth of his family!
Having nothing much to do over the past few days, Luffy had occupied himself with various tasks. He had designated the day the apocalypse erupted as January 1st of the Post-Apocalyptic Era. By that calendar, today was January 25th.
During this time, he had killed many zombies and collected numerous Corpse Pouches. However, after consuming the first few, he found that the intensely euphoric sensation had disappeared. This meant the Corpse Pouches no longer had any effect on him. Still, those initial consumptions had noticeably increased his overall strength. Through some unintentional experimentation over the last few days, he discovered two new abilities.
First, he realized he possessed a certain degree of deterrence against ordinary zombies. As long as he let out a furious roar, the zombies around him would display obvious fear—either freezing in place or fleeing from him.
Second, he could control zombies to perform simple actions. Through his tests, he found he could command the zombies within a ten-meter radius to move according to his orders. Perhaps, as he grew stronger, this range would continue to expand.
He officially named these two abilities "Deterrence" and "Control"—simple and straightforward. Luffy guessed that he had now entered the ranks of a Tier One Zombie.
As for why he needed to go home, the first reason was the lingering presence of his family. But the most crucial reason was that there was a satellite phone in his basement.
Although he hadn’t been able to contact his parents since the apocalypse began, he absolutely refused to believe they were dead. After all, compared to himself, his father was stronger by leaps and bounds. Luffy might be a wealthy second-generation heir, a pampered playboy, but his father certainly was not! Their pre-apocalyptic family fortune had been built from scratch by his parents’ own hands. The hardships they had endured were something a privileged young master like him could never fully comprehend. Even though his father was over forty, Luffy couldn’t hold a candle to him when it came to practical skills and abilities.
Their basement was equipped with a complete set of fitness equipment. No matter how busy his father was, as long as he was home, he would always carve out some time every day to work out and practice boxing. Therefore, Luffy firmly believed that as long as his parents hadn’t been terribly unlucky and turned into zombies right at the start, their chances of survival were extremely high.
Once he got home and charged the satellite phone, he could try to contact them. Perhaps right at this moment, on the other side of Water Blue Star, his parents were also guarding their satellite phone, waiting for him to call!
His father had purchased three satellite phones in total. Whenever his parents traveled far from home, they would each bring one along. The one left at home belonged to Luffy. Simply because he found the device too ugly, he never carried it around and just left it at the house. Ground-based communications might have been severed for various reasons, but satellite phones transmitted data directly through satellites in orbit. Luffy figured that even in the apocalypse, these highly advanced artificial intelligence satellites would continue functioning for a very long time.
His home was located in City Garden at the center of the CG District in LZ City. It was a villa district surrounded by high-end residential communities, about thirteen kilometers away from his current location.
Given his unique identity as a zombie, Luffy decided to travel at night. Only under the cover of darkness and limited visibility would he avoid being exposed to the eyes of other survivors.
With a whole afternoon still ahead of him, he decided to find something else to do. After studying a map, he discovered that the QLH District Police Station wasn’t far away—less than two kilometers in a straight line. He decided to check out the police station, as he knew there would be guns there.
In the apocalypse, possessing a firearm offered a massive deterrence. Although guns had significant limitations—such as the loud gunshots attracting hordes of zombies—would Luffy actually care about that? Besides, even though he was a zombie, he was a zombie with a brain. He felt it was absolutely necessary to get his hands on a few firearms.
After weaving through several streets, Luffy arrived at the main gate of the QLH District Police Station.
This once majestic and sacred place had been completely overrun by zombies. They were packed densely together; the zombie population density here was significantly higher than in other areas. Over ten days ago, Luffy vaguely remembered hearing gunshots. Perhaps those shots had come from this very police station. But naturally, the noise had attracted even more zombies to converge on the location. Firing a gun might feel great in the moment, but attracting a massive horde of zombies definitely ruined the mood.
However, Luffy’s objective was crystal clear: secure some guns. With that goal in mind, he wove through the zombie horde, searching for any signs of police officers.
He spotted quite a few zombies in police uniforms, but none of them carried sidearms. Luffy completely understood; after all, in a country with strict gun control laws, not every officer was issued a firearm. After searching the entire perimeter without finding a single armed officer, it became evident that he would have to head straight to the station’s armory. Or, perhaps the armed officers who turned into zombies were still wandering inside the main building.
He observed the main building for a moment. The front doors were wide open, and zombies were freely shuffling in and out. This meant the building had already been fully conquered by the horde, which paradoxically made it relatively safe for him.
In Luffy’s understanding, an armory would either be in the basement or on the top floor. After a brief ponder, he decided to search the basement first.
When people thought of a police station, they often imagined a heavily guarded fortress. The reality was quite the opposite. Since no one was stupid enough to commit a crime inside a police station, the internal security was actually quite lax. At the very least, Luffy’s journey into the basement and his discovery of the armory went incredibly smoothly. Even the heavy vault door of the armory was wide open. Perhaps when the apocalypse struck, the officers guarding it had unlocked the door, grabbed weapons, and fled. As to whether those officers were still alive now, Luffy remained highly skeptical.
Having a gun or two might give someone an absolute advantage among human survivors, but in a world teeming with endless hordes of zombies, it was often nothing more than a death warrant.
Luffy was very afraid of dying. Therefore, ever since he discovered his "Control" ability, he had constantly kept seven or eight zombies surrounding him as meat shields. Even if he ran into danger, the probability of him being targeted first was only one in nine, drastically increasing his personal safety.
After issuing an order for his zombie squad to guard the armory entrance, Luffy strode inside. Even if he walked out of his command radius, these zombies would continue to loiter at the door, and they would immediately rush forward the moment they spotted any survivor.
The moment he stepped into the armory, Luffy was greeted by all sorts of neatly categorized weapons.
Pistols made up the majority. From the labeled sections, Luffy noted two models of handguns: the Type 54 and the Type 64, with the latter being far more abundant. Since pistols were lightweight and easy to carry, he definitely had to take two. Aside from the handguns, Luffy picked out a Shotgun—often hailed as the ultimate close-quarter weapon—and an assault rifle, which would be perfect for mid-range suppressive fire. Finally, his eyes landed on a sniper rifle.
Although it didn’t look like one of the world-famous sniper rifles commonly found in video games—like a Barrett or an AWM—it was still impressive enough. It was a QBU-88 sniper rifle, featuring a slender, pitch-black barrel, a wooden stock, and a high-magnification scope. It was truly a lethal long-range weapon and perfectly suited Luffy’s established combat strategy: hiding in the shadows and sniping from afar. Following the instructional manual, he dismantled the rifle, packed it into its carrying case, and decisively slung it over his shoulder.
On the armory wall hung bulletproof vests of various sizes. Luffy strapped one onto his body and proceeded to stuff its ammo pouches full of cartridges for all his different firearms. He even fully equipped himself with a SWAT helmet and tactical anti-riot goggles.
By the time Luffy stepped back out of the armory, he was armed to the teeth. From a distance, he wouldn’t look remotely like a zombie; instead, he resembled a heavily geared special forces operative or an armed police soldier.
Despite this impressive haul, he still felt a pang of regret. There was an entire armory full of weapons here, and it was physically impossible for him to carry it all away on his own.
But as his gaze fell upon the zombies he had stationed to guard the armory, a brilliant idea suddenly sparked in his mind.