100: Return to the world

"Hey—! There's someone here—!"

The silent riverbank was suddenly torn apart by a hoarse roar that almost cracked!

Wang Dalong's eyes were bloodshot, the veins on his neck bulging. He used all his strength, enough to tear his lungs, to let out the most hysterical shout of his life toward that distant sound source that hummed like a mosquito.

Lin Feng, beside him, also had his heart racing wildly. He didn't roar; instead, he immediately rushed to the most prominent rock on the riverbank, waving his arms desperately with such large movements that he almost flung himself into the river.

That "putt-putt-putt" motor sound seemed like a gospel sent from heaven.

The sound came from far to near until finally, a small but incredibly sturdy-looking motorboat cut through the waves and appeared at the end of their vision!

Two men were sitting on the boat.

Their skin was tanned bronze, they wore wide straw hats and lean, short outfits—at a glance, they were locals who made a living on the river all year round.

Obviously, they had also spotted the two figures on the shore who looked like they had gone mad.

The motor sound weakened, and the motorboat slowed down. The bow carved a graceful arc, cautiously and with extreme vigilance, slowly approaching the shore.

"¿Quién eres tú? (Who are you?)"

At the bow, an older fisherman with eyes as sharp as an eagle's questioned them loudly in heavily accented Portuguese. His hand never left the handle of a long fish-gutting knife by the gunwale.

Lin Feng jumped down from the rock and raised his hands to show he was not a threat.

He scoured his brain for his meager vocabulary, combined it with exaggerated body language, and struggled to piece together a sentence: "We... exploring... lost..."

The two fishermen's gazes swept back and forth over them like searchlights.

It was no wonder they were vigilant.

At this moment, the appearance of Lin Feng and Wang Dalong was truly terrifying.

The combat uniforms they wore had long been shredded by thorns and rocks, hanging off them like rags. Their faces and arms were covered in crisscrossing bloody gashes and dried mud; their hair was as messy as a bird's nest, and their eyes held both the alertness of a wild beast and the exhaustion of being on the verge of collapse.

This look didn't resemble explorers, but rather evil spirits crawling out of hell.

Perhaps their miserable state was so impactful that it didn't seem faked. The vigilance on the old fisherman's face finally loosened slightly. His rough face was full of hesitation, but in the end, he gestured to his companion and gave Lin Feng and Wang Dalong a heavy nod.

"Thank you! Holy crap! Thank you so much!"

When Wang Dalong saw that nod, all his pent-up emotions exploded at that moment. He was so excited he almost wanted to kowtow to them on the spot. He scrambled toward the riverbank using both hands and feet, clumsily yet swiftly climbing onto the motorboat.

The moment his feet touched the solid deck, his whole body went limp. He felt like he hadn't boarded a small boat, but rather Noah's Ark that redeemed all things.

This time... it's finally safe!

Lin Feng followed closely behind. He wasn't as expressive as Wang Dalong; he simply stood up straight after stepping onto the boat, bowed deeply to their two saviors, and solemnly uttered two words with his most standard pronunciation:

"Obrigado (Thank you)."

The motorboat's engine roared again, the bow swung around, and it turned to head upstream through the waves.

"Friends, did you come from downstream?" The old fisherman asked while skillfully steering the boat, eyeing them through the rearview mirror with curiosity and a hint of alarm.

"Yes, from downstream... we walked all the way." Lin Feng pointed to the dark green, seemingly endless Rainforest behind them.

"Downstream?"

The old fisherman's brow instantly knitted into a knot. He looked at the two of them as if they were madmen, his voice rising an octave: "Further downstream are the 'Devil's Throat' and 'Giant Snake Bay'! Even locals don't dare go near there; no living person can get through! You... you walked from there?"

Lin Feng and Wang Dalong glanced at each other, both seeing deep lingering fear in the other's eyes.

It seemed that the death domain occupied by that Emperor Crocodile and the Titanoboa was a notorious forbidden zone even among the locals.

"We were lucky and bypassed it," Lin Feng didn't explain much, giving only a vague answer.

The word "bypassed" was an understatement.

But only they knew what kind of life-and-death perils they had experienced.

The motorboat sped across the river, the river breeze smelling of water hitting their faces and blowing away the exhaustion and scent of blood accumulated over the past few days. They breathed in the scent of the civilized world greedily.

About half an hour later, at a huge bend in the river ahead, a uniquely shaped giant rock suddenly burst into Lin Feng's sight.

The silhouette of that rock, outlined by the golden afterglow of the setting sun, looked exactly like the head of an eagle about to take flight! The lines were hard, and the aura was magnificent!

Eagle Head Rock!

Lin Feng's pupils suddenly constricted!

They had actually returned here!

A thought flashed through his mind like lightning—the preset route of that escape pod wasn't random at all. Its destination was this gateway water area where they had first entered the Rainforest!

The starting point was also the endpoint.

Everything seemed to be controlled by an invisible giant hand, forming a perfect, heart-palpitating closed loop!

After another ten minutes or so, a simple but lively riverside pier appeared before them.

Several old fishing boats were moored haphazardly at the pier. Some fishmongers and buyers were loudly haggling with the newly returned fishermen, and the air was filled with the smell of fish, water plants, and the aroma of food.

All this noise and chaos felt so familiar at this moment that it made them want to cry.

This was the human world.

Lin Feng and Wang Dalong stuffed all the few dozen dollars they had left into the hands of the two fishermen. The old fisherman wanted to decline, but seeing their sincere eyes, he eventually accepted.

Their feet finally stepped onto the solid wooden pier.

Looking at the lively crowds coming and going around them, hearing the noisy hawking and laughing/cursing in their ears, the two supported each other, momentarily at a loss.

They both had an illusory feeling of having traveled back from another world, as if a lifetime had passed.

The two dragged their heavy steps into the small town by the pier, which had only one main road. On both sides of the road were low-slung but well-equipped shops and restaurants, brightly lit.

Almost instinctively, they found a small inn with a clean-looking sign and used their last change to rent the cheapest room.

"Click."

When the door closed, completely cutting off the noise from the outside world.

Lin Feng and Wang Dalong could no longer hold on.

The two felt as if their spines had been removed; their legs went weak almost simultaneously, and they collapsed heavily onto the cold floor.

Fatigue, soreness, hunger, lingering fear... all the negative feelings forcibly suppressed by their willpower flooded over them like a bursting dam the moment their spirits completely relaxed.

But even more so, it was an indescribable ecstasy and relief at having survived.

Wang Dalong lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling, chuckling like an idiot for a long time.

As he laughed, tears fell from the corners of his eyes.

Suddenly, as if remembering something of the utmost importance, he leaped up from the floor and lunged toward his backpack.

With trembling hands, he unzipped it and carefully, as if holding a rare treasure, took out the sports camera from a pile of junk—it was already scarred and its casing was cracked.

His fingers, with a near-pilgrim-like devotion, pressed the play button.

A faint glow lit up.

On the screen, the final images of the Golden City silently emerged.

That city, so magnificent it exceeded the limits of human imagination, slowly decomposed like a sand painting in the silent, pure light, collapsing and finally turning into golden dust flying all over the sky... "Brother Feng..."

Wang Dalong's voice carried a heavy nasal tone and a tremor as if he were in a dream.

"We... really went there."

It wasn't a hallucination, it wasn't a dream.

All of this was real.

Lin Feng slowly leaned in, looking at the soul-shaking images on the screen, his eyes swirling with incredibly complex emotions.

There was shock, awe, regret, and a hint of... a bewilderment that even he couldn't explain.

He reached out his hand, his fingertips touching the cold screen extremely gently, as if he wanted to touch that ancient history that had completely passed away and been buried by the long river of time through this medium.

"Yeah."

He responded in a low voice, so hoarse it was almost inaudible.

"We went there."

After speaking, he slowly turned his head to look out the window.

The last ray of the setting sun's afterglow had just disappeared from the mountain ridge on the horizon. In the distance, the lights of ten thousand homes in downtown Manaus were lighting up one by one like stars.

Their Amazon trip was over.

But they knew that some things would be changed forever.