Chapter 25: Hibernation Ability Disappeared?

"So I slept for a whole month? Winter's come, why don't I need to hibernate?"

Baichuan, who had just woken from his evolution slumber, was a little dazed, because he clearly remembered it being only autumn before the evolution.

He hadn't expected that after the evolution finished, he'd wake to find it was already winter.

And a skinny old wolf and a rabbit had actually appeared right in front of him.

Wasn't he staying in his cave before the evolution? Where did a wolf and a rabbit come from?

Although Baichuan still couldn't figure out what was going on, having just woken up, food coming to him while he was starving was undoubtedly a good thing.

So he didn't stand on ceremony, and took the opportunity to test out his newly evolved Electric Generation ability.

Just as he expected, Electric Generation was indeed a double-edged sword.

He looked at his currently reddened and slightly numb sharp claws, and sighed.

One had to know that his claws were covered in a keratin layer with extremely high electrical resistance, as well as hard, fine, dense scales.

Yet even so, after he continuously struck out ten electrified claw attacks, they began to turn red and sting a little.

It seemed this ability couldn't be used as a regular method, unless he could find a better electric current protection ability to keep himself from getting hurt.

Still, since coming to this world, this counted as him eating cooked food once more, didn't it?

Baichuan looked at the somewhat half-raw, half-cooked, or even only partially charred flesh on the ground and said uncertainly.

A moment later.

Having eaten nearly his fill, he finally understood how a wolf and a rabbit had ended up running into his cave.

It turned out the winter snow was a bit too thick, and his luxurious cave wasn't dug very deep.

So, under the weight of the accumulated snow itself, plus the appearance of the wolf and rabbit, the cave ceiling toward the front collapsed in an instant.

"Looks like I'll have to pay more attention to safety when digging holes in the future. If the cave hadn't been spacious this time, I'd probably have been buried alive."

Baichuan thought darkly, looking at the cave with the collapsed ceiling.

But he couldn't stay in this cave any longer; it was time for him to leave.

Even now, he still didn't understand why he didn't need to hibernate.

And even though the biting cold wind outside made him feel cold, he simply didn't feel his metabolism beginning to slowly lower, preparing to enter a hibernation state.

One had to know that snakes were ectothermic creatures, changing with the environmental temperature; the lower the temperature, the stiffer their bodies became.

Yet he still maintained a normal body temperature, and because of the cold, his whole body began to spontaneously activate in order to resist the cold.

Food began to digest at an accelerated rate, breaking down into Biological Energy to be quickly absorbed by the body.

Did this mean he had lost the ability to hibernate?

Or that he was no longer an ectothermic creature?

He didn't know whether this situation was good or bad either.

After leaving that cave, Baichuan's mind was full of questions, completely unaware that the scales on his body were slowly beginning to change color along with the environment.

The scales were no longer pitch-black and golden-yellow, but began turning the same white, yellow, green as the surroundings…

White was the snowy ground, yellow was the withered trees around, green was the cold-resistant trees in the snowy forest…

Before long, in the entire snowy forest, one could no longer see that a great snake had been there; only a deep resting trace on the ground proved its existence.

After crawling for a while, Baichuan felt something was off. "What's going on?"

He lowered his head to look at himself, and at a glance only saw the color of the snowy ground.

"Did I… turn invisible?"

He suddenly realized that besides Electric Generation, he also had an environment simulation ability.

But was this ability passive?

Baichuan clearly knew he hadn't actively used invisibility at this moment, yet he was currently invisible—so was this ability passive?

He closed his eyes, carefully savoring the wondrous experience his body brought.

The next moment, his body slowly returned to its original black, and shortly after, the scales all over his body turned entirely golden, white, cyan…

For a time he played with it quite happily; the feeling was rather wondrous.

It turned out this ability could be entirely left to instinct to control, which was the earlier passive change with the environment.

At the same time, it could also be actively controlled by himself—whatever color he wanted to change to, he could.

That made sense; if there were only active changes without the passive kind, then whenever he wanted to use it in the future, wouldn't he have to constantly pay full attention to environmental changes and change along with them?

Wouldn't that just tire him to death, let alone the fact that he wouldn't be able to do anything else that way.

After all, if you put all your attention on this during a fight, would you still have the energy to watch your opponent?

After understanding this, Baichuan suddenly realized that the instincts of this creature were quite wondrous and quite powerful.

If one day in the future he could unlock it, how powerful would he be.

……

An hour later.

Baichuan stopped his crawling body, looking somewhat solemnly at this desolate snowy forest; the snowy forest now was even more barren than in other seasons before.

At a glance, he could basically find no sign of life.

"I can't go on like this. The weather's getting colder and colder, I can't keep exposing myself to the bone-chilling wind, I need to find a comfortable place sheltered from the wind."

Baichuan thought, watching the ceaselessly howling cold wind.

But where could he find such an environment?

For a moment Baichuan had no experience either; he was a bit lost right now. In the past when he encountered difficulties, most of the time his body's instincts could give him a direction.

But now those instincts were gone, because snakes normally didn't appear in winter at all; they generally began hibernating back in autumn.

Yet because of his constant evolution, he had now lost the means to hibernate, coupled with the cave collapse.

Leaving him somewhat at a loss as to what to do.

In the end, it was still because there was too little food in the snowy forest in winter.

If it were as before, within a single bell's time of going out, he would have already found food and started eating.

But now, not a single trace of life could be found.

If not for the two servings of food that had delivered themselves right to his door when he had just woken up, he was afraid he would have become a disgrace among transmigrators—the first one to starve to death.

This time, with a concrete target, Baichuan soon began swimming again.

Along the way, he specifically looked for places on the ground that might contain burrows.

Sure enough, it didn't take long before he found a narrow burrow.

He didn't care what was inside and directly started burrowing in—or rather, it would be even better if there was a creature inside, letting him have a full meal.

At the same time, his pair of claws kept slightly enlarging the burrow.

It didn't take long before he felt the cold air outside slowly leaving him, and his body gradually began to warm up again.

For the first time, he felt how wonderful warmth was.

Soon, he entered a suddenly spacious cavern.

What met his eyes was a snake coiled inside in a state of hibernation.

Baichuan estimated by eye that this snake should be over two meters long; its head was triangular in shape, with faint black markings forming a "king" character on it, and its whole body was colored in alternating yellow, white, and black, like the rapeseed blossoms in a vegetable patch.

(End of this chapter)