After digging for more than ten minutes with his tentacles, System finally managed to crawl out of the snow.

  Looking around, he saw that the surrounding area was already covered in white. The snow had stopped falling, but it seemed as if the whole world had become a nd of snow.

  The cold wind caused the branches above System's head to make a creaking sound due to the heavy accumution of snow. Upon seeing this, he used his tentacles to move his body to a safe area at the side in order to avoid any falling branches.

  While he was moving, System was finally able to get a clear look at his current appearance.

  His body looked very unbanced because of his shrunken abdomen. His full length was now only about seventeen centimeters. Both of his wings and the exoskeleton connecting them to his body had disappeared, making him feel naked.

  His tentacles had grown back, but they were only half of their original length and were very fragile. His broken right eye had also grown back, but he could only vaguely see a faint light with it. He assumed that his sight would come back eventually.

  The strangest features of his new body were the dozens of tentacles that had sprouted in pce of his original legs.

  He looked extremely ugly now. If he didn't mention it himself, no one would ever guess that he was a grasshopper. In fact, even if he told them, they would have a hard time believing it.

  System spent a few moments feeling the cold wind blowing through the forest. The temperature on the surface was lower than the temperature under the snow, but the colder temperature didn't have much effect on his current body.

  [Color Camoufge] activated!

  The color of System's skin gradually turned lighter. Except for his brown tentacles, the rest of his body gradually turned a slightly grayish white, which served as a protective color for his body.

  Because System's body weighed very little, he wouldn't sink into the snow when he used his tentacles to move his body. Walking on top of the snow wasn't difficult at all for him.

  After practicing walking on the snow for a while and getting used to carrying his body, System stretched out his tentacles and began climbing a nearby tree.

  Unlike his legs, his tentacles didn't have any tiny spurs on them, so it was a bit more difficult to use them to climb trees. However, he simply had too many tentacles now.

  There were fifteen tentacles of various lengths, all of them full of strength, which was enough for System to handle many tasks.

  The shorter tentacles could be inserted into the gaps in the bark as support, while the longer tentacles could directly wrap around the tree to help secure his body.

  At first, System wasn't used to using so many tentacles to climb. However, after spending some time practicing, although he found that these tentacles weren't as useful for climbing as his leg spurs and powerful jumps had been, they were also very convenient.

  After half an hour of practice, System could already move between the branches of different trees like a swinging ape. He could even pluck and eat frozen leaves with his other tentacles while doing it.

  ...

  The forest had obviously changed a lot after the snow, but by comparing ndmarks with the video records in his [Tools Menu], System was able to determine his current location.

  He was about three kilometers away from his temporary nest. According to his current speed, he estimated that he could successfully return in just over ten hours.

  System was very worried about Shava and his ant subjects. The food in the temporary nest could st for a long time, but the weather in the forest was too cold for them.

  The impact of the heavy snow on the creatures in the forest was even stronger than the impact of the heavy rain that System had experienced before. The only sound in the forest was the cold wind blowing through tree branches. System could no longer hear any insects.

  Aside from an unknown bird flying in the distance, System only saw some tiny footprints in the snow, which should have been left by creatures such as rabbits or mice.

  Although this heavy snow had caused a fatal blow to insects, it didn't seem to have caused any serious damage to these small mammals.

  System followed the footprints for a while. Judging by their size, he guessed that the owner of the footprints wasn't very big, so he could try to hunt it.

  However, after following the footprints for a while, he didn't manage to find anything. The footprints stopped abruptly at the roots of a tree. It seemed like the footprints had been left by a squirrel.

  However, because of his pursuit of the squirrel, System received an unexpected reward—a frozen spider.

  This bck spider was curled up under a branch, and it seemed that it had frozen to death while avoiding the wind and snow.

  System used his tentacles to tear the spider's abdomen into small pieces and shoved them into his mouth.

  He thought that this frozen corpse would be much too hard and icy to eat easily, but it wasn't actually much different from eating a fresh spider. The soft meat from the spider's abdomen melted in his mouth with only a little bit of chewing, just like eating ice cream.

  As he swallowed the spider's corpse, a warm current appeared in System's stomach. Eating this nutritious meat had restored a good deal of his physical strength.

  As he continued tearing apart the spider's corpse, he hesitated for a while before eventually tearing off a small piece of the spider's venom gnd and putting it in his mouth.

  In the end, the spider's venom gnd didn't harm him. Instead, it made his body feel very comfortable. The strong coffee fvor invigorated his spirits and made him more aware of his surroundings.

  ...

  System ate the spider's body bit by bit without wasting any of it. He didn't even spare the spider's unpatable hair.

  Just as he finished swallowing the st bits of flesh and blood from the spider's body, System trembled slightly. His [Intuition] suddenly brought him a sense of uneasiness.

  He used his tentacles to shift his body and looked up.

  A bck bird with a wingspan of about half a meter was visible in the sky about a thousand meters above him. This bck bird had a pair of sharp cws, a beak like an eagle, and a pair of piercing eyes.

  System knew that this carnivorous bck raptor had discovered him.

  Using his tentacles subconsciously, System decisively moved to the bottom of the branch, hiding his body to avoid an attack from the bird in the sky.

  However, it wasn't long before he moved his body back out from under the branch again, exposing his position to the bck bird.

  Because of System's [Ultrafast Digestion], the spider's body had been rapidly dissolved not long after he'd swallowed it. Its nutrients were already being used to restore his health.

  System stared at the bck bird in the air, and his mandibles twitched unconsciously. This bird might want to prey on System, but System was also hungry...

  With over a dozen tentacles of different lengths, plus [Corrosive Mucus] and his newly acquired [Frost Breath] ability, System had the courage to fight this opponent.

  Plus, his [Intuition] had only conveyed some uneasiness, not the level of tension he'd expect if he was facing a potentially fatal crisis.

  For some reason, System felt that this bird wasn't his match. There was no reason or basis for this feeling. He just felt like this bird couldn't beat him.

  If he and the bird fought and one of them ended up dying, the one to die would definitely be the bird.

  System swung his tentacles around, moved to a conspicuous position on the tree, and started making big, showy movements to attract the bird's attention.

  The bck bird quickly located him again, and was soon diving straight down toward System at a very high speed.

  System noticed that his mandibles were twitching again...

  Two of his tentacles were securing him to a pair of branches. He stretched out all of his other tentacles in the direction of the bck bird in order to protect his body.

  Faced with the descending bird's talons, System's blocking tentacles were like rubber bands and springs shielding his body.

  When they cshed, the bck bird's talons failed to reach System's body. System bounced backward when the talons and tentacles met. At the same time, a ball of brown mucus and a cloud of icy blue breath sprayed out of his mouth.

  The brown mucus was faster, and it reached the bird first, spttering directly onto the bird's head. System immediately controlled the mucus, making it wriggle toward the bird's eyes!

  Soon after the mucus hit, System's frosty breath arrived, and a yer of frost formed on the bird's head.

  There was a big conflict between [Corrosive Mucus] and [Frost Breath]. System found that when [Frost Breath] was sprayed on his mucus, his mucus would get frozen and lose its ability to move.

  But that was no longer important...

  Even though these two abilities conflicted, the bck bird still suffered a lot of damage. It fell from the air onto the nearby snow and was filing its wings wildly. It had obviously been caught off guard by System's sudden attack.

  Seeing this, System immediately skittered over on his tentacles.

  He first wrapped his two longest tentacles around the bird's wings, preventing it from flying away, then used more tentacles to wrap around its body's joints. As more than a dozen tentacles intertwined back and forth, the bck bird's fluttering movements in the snow grew more and more restrained.

  System once again sprayed [Corrosive Mucus] on the bird's head, then controlled the sticky mucus to move toward the bird's beak.

  He wanted to use this mucus to block the bird's throat and suffocate it to death!

  Time passed little by little, and the bck bird struggled more and more violently due to its impending suffocation. Just when System was about to kill the bird and feast to his heart's content, his [Intuition] sent him an inexplicable feeling.

  A beam of icy blue light as thick as a human finger suddenly fell from the sky.

  This icy blue light penetrated System's body and froze the bird beneath him into an ice block. Unlike the bird, System's body wasn't affected at all.

  He soon discovered an icy blue ball of light the size of a baby's fist floating in the sky two meters above him. The icy blue light column just now had obviously been the masterpiece of this light ball.