Of course, food might not be that important, but oxygen and water were crucial for Zhang Yanhang, since his current rank was low, making it impossible for him to detach from these essential materials for sustaining life.
He had heard that when an Awakener cultivated to a certain extent, they could establish their own Spiritual Qi Cycle to free themselves from the shackles of mundane things like oxygen, water, and food, thus achieving a Transcendent to Holy State completely.
But for now, that realm was still too far away for Zhang Yanhang; he couldn't even accomplish the basic Fasting, let alone shake off the need for water and oxygen.
Given that he had already cleared the path from the apartment to the gun store successfully, Zhang Yanhang was set to initiate the second phase of the Raccoon City Outer Zone Clearance Plan, which was the stretch from the gun store to the location of the slot machine, passing through an area of at least five square kilometers.
In the first phase, Zhang Yanhang had only cleared one square kilometer of the Raccoon City outer zone, while the actual area of Raccoon City covered more than forty square kilometers, with the predominant outer zone being about thirty square kilometers.
Thus, although Zhang Yanhang had spent an hour killing zombies, he had only completed one-thirtieth of the entire Raccoon City Outer Zone Clearance Plan.
The second phase, from the gun store to the slot machine, was estimated to cover more than five square kilometers, and depending on the situation, it might even need to clear nearly ten square kilometers.
This was precisely why Zhang Yanhang had divided the Raccoon City Outer Zone Clearance Plan into several phases, as Raccoon City in the Ashen World, although several times smaller than the Raccoon City in the biohazard scenario, was still a considerably vast city for the current stage of Zhang Yanhang; it was absolutely impossible to clear it in one go.
Currently, Zhang Yanhang had planned four phases to complete the entire Raccoon City Outer Zone Clearance Plan. The first phase went from the apartment to the gun store, covering the smallest area of one square kilometer, mainly for practice and increasing skillfulness.
Then came the second phase, from the gun store to the slot machine, which would need to clear an area of more than five square kilometers; followed by the third phase, from the slot machine to the Big Treasure Box, meant to clear more than ten square kilometers; and finally, the fourth phase, from the Big Treasure Box all the way back to the apartment, requiring an area of more than seven square kilometers to be cleared.
Once he completed this plan, Zhang Yanhang would have essentially made a full round about Raccoon City and then, he could confidently and boldly enter the middle layer of Raccoon City, home to many Lickers and a selection of Hunters as well as several advanced models of Tyrants.
"Hopefully, the plan proceeds smoothly..." Although Zhang Yanhang knew he could not complete the entire clearance plan at once, he still wanted to achieve as much as possible, which would make things much easier later.
After clarifying his action plan, Zhang Yanhang reorganized the items at hand; he slung his ancestral single-shoulder bag again, which had actually been bitten through by a Zombie Dog before, but he had repaired it using alchemy. After all, having carried it for so long, he had formed a slight attachment to it.
Of course, if Zhang Yanhang could immediately get a bunch of waist bags now, he would definitely discard this single-shoulder bag, but sadly, that wasn't possible, so he had to keep using the ancestral bag.
At present, Zhang Yanhang's waist bag only had eight compartments, which were somewhat insufficient compared to the items he had accumulated. He felt that he needed at least twenty compartments to categorize his items properly.
He quickly counted and found that the items he currently needed to fit in the waist bag were indeed quite a lot, including bottled water, canned food, alchemy materials, Red Medicine Herb, Green Medicine Grass, Red and Green Pills, small Magic Recovery Potion, Emergency Spray, guns, bullets, and the E-rank Talent "Slow Corrosion."
Zhang Yanhang also needed to reserve a compartment just for treasure boxes, as his single-shoulder bag could only hold a dozen or so treasure boxes at most. Besides the treasure boxes, he needed another compartment for miscellaneous items.
So, with just the items on hand, Zhang Yanhang felt he needed at least a dozen compartments, making the demand for twenty compartments quite reasonable.
This time, Zhang Yanhang packed into his single-shoulder bag a bottle of mineral water, a small Magic Recovery Potion, a Red and Green Pill, an Emergency Spray, a room key, an apartment main door key, and an Enemy Seeking Radar.
You might wonder why Zhang Yanhang didn't pack the Beretta 92F pistol and its magazine this time?
The secondary reason was that Zhang Yanhang had placed the Beretta 92F pistol and its spare magazines on his belt. The primary reason, however, was that he was currently in a gun store! Obviously, he was going to equip himself with a rifle or submachine-gun! With a rifle available, who would still want to use a Beretta 92F pistol?
Moreover, he had mentioned earlier that he wanted to find himself a rifle, as the quantity of bullets in a pistol was too limited, causing frequent magazine swaps which became quite troublesome. Besides, this wasn't a game; he had to manually reload spent magazines with bullets to reuse them, making it really annoying to press bullets into a magazine while killing zombies.
In fact, during a previous Time Pause when opening treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang had already essentially explored the store, so this time, he planned to switch to an M4A1 assault rifle, which, like the Beretta 92F pistol, was a classic piece of United States military weaponry using 5.56x45mm NATO standard rifle rounds.
5.56mm bullets were significantly more powerful than 9mm bullets. To give a simple comparison, 9mm bullets have an energy of about 500 joules, while 5.56mm bullets have an energy of about 1800 joules, making a 3.6 times difference in kinetic energy alone, naturally making their lethality self-evident.
By the way, the most classic AK47 uses 7.62×39mm caliber rifle rounds, with an energy of about 2000 joules. Thus, in terms of lethality, it's pretty much similar to ordinary 5.56mm rounds.
Of course, if switching to 7.62×54mm machine gun rounds, that's a completely different story, as these similarly termed 7.62 caliber machine gun rounds have energy of about 3600 joules, which is double that of ordinary 5.56mm bullets.