Two minutes after the Camry vanished into the depths of the night, the gargantuan beast known as the "Internet" fully stirred to life.
On TikTok and X, a shaky, fifteen-second video clip began proliferating at a maddening speed of a million clicks per minute. The hashtags #BrooklynFireBoy and #MagicInDannys instantly rocketed to the top of New York's trending charts.
The comment sections had already devolved into a digital carnival of chaos and war:
@NY_TruthSeeker: "This is absolutely top-tier AI real-time rendering, or maybe Marvel's viral marketing for a new movie. It looks too real!"
@BayRidgeResident: "Dammit! I was there on the scene, and I swear that wasn't CGI! Fire literally erupted from that kid's hand—my hair still smells like it's been singed!"
@ConspiracyCat: "Look at his eyes at the 8-second mark. His pupils turn dark red. That's not a light humans should have. That is the mark of a demon."
Meanwhile, back at Danny's Bar.
Over a dozen police cruisers had sealed off the area so tightly that not even water could leak through. Emergency Service Unit (ESU) teams in tactical vests surged into the scene, clutching their rifles. A technician wearing white gloves knelt before the shattered liquor cabinet, cautiously using a pair of tweezers to pick up the deformed bullet.
"Sir," the technician turned his head, his face turning a ghastly shade of iron-blue. "There's a type of… unreadable energy on this casing."
Across from the bar, in the long shadows beneath the elevated highway, three figures stood silently in the biting cold wind.
They wore identical, ink-black trench coats with subtle grey cloud patterns embroidered on the collars. Their pupils held a deathly, ashen hue—void of emotion—while their lips curled into cruel, jagged arcs.
One of them spoke, his voice rasping like serrated metal grinding together. "Hidden for so long, and yet he finally lit the signal flare himself."
"I am tracking their movements now," another whispered in a low tone.
"Harvest time has arrived."
A gust of wind swept through; the highway was suddenly empty, as if no one had ever been there. Meanwhile, the Camry carrying Ethan crossed the crowded bridge, racing away toward Chinatown on the opposite bank of the Brooklyn Bridge.
When Ethan opened his eyes again, the world felt as though it had been draped in an ancient, sepia filter.
His nostrils were flooded with a scent of sandalwood so thick it was almost piercing. It was different from the soothing incense Linda usually lit; it carried a bone-chilling coldness and a decaying woodiness from deep underground, surging straight into his mind and forcibly dragging his consciousness—muddled by high fever—back into reality.
His vision slowly slid into focus. There were no sterile, white shadowless lamps of a hospital here, nor the rhythmic ticking of an EKG monitor. Above him hung countless brass ritual instruments, swaying and shimmering under the dim, flickering candlelight. The surrounding walls were plastered with yellowed scrolls, their twisted cinnabar characters seemingly writhing in the darkness. He looked up, and his eyes fell upon a pitch-black sandalwood plaque above the doorframe, bearing four powerful gold-lacquered characters: "Wu's Massage."
"He's awake, Linda."
It was a voice as deep as an ancient bell. Ethan turned his head stiffly to see a skeletal old man standing by the bed. He wore a faded, white massage uniform with frayed edges. His body was as withered as a piece of deadwood, but his eyes were terrifyingly clear, like an ancient mirror capable of reflecting the soul.
"George Wu…" Linda's voice came from a corner, carrying a suppressed tremor.
Before Ethan could open his mouth to ask anything, terror instantly seized his heart. He saw the old man's left hand spread open, with several three-inch-long spikes resting quietly in his palm. Those nails were dark teal throughout, showing no metallic luster under the candlelight; instead, they possessed a jade-like warmth, covered in forbidden runes as fine as strands of hair.
"What are you tryin—"
Before the words could fall, George Wu moved. His speed was incredible. He pressed his index and middle fingers together like a sword-sign, and with a light flick, he launched the nails into the air.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud!
Four muffled impacts. Ethan didn't even feel the pain; he only felt a sudden, piercing cold at his joints, as if four shards of ice had instantly burrowed into the gaps of his bones. Immediately after, George Wu's fingers tapped in rapid succession, firing the fifth and sixth nails with pinpoint precision into Ethan's left and right collarbones.
"Hah!" George Wu let out a low, sharp shout. With a flick of his withered palm, Ethan's heavy body was flipped into the air like a fallen leaf.
The final dark-teal spike whistled through the air, piercing his skin and firmly embedding itself into the coccyx at the base of his spine. Ethan was pinned to the wooden bed like a butterfly specimen, held fast by an invisible yet absolute power.
He tried to exert force in a panic, only to find that his muscles had lost all neural connection. Even the tremors in his fingertips were completely locked down. Even more bizarrely, those scalding red lines that had been rampaging beneath his skin shrank back in fear the moment they touched the nails, retreating like they had met their natural predator.
"Where… where is this… let me go…" Ethan wheezed with great effort, his voice so weak he could barely hear himself.
"Don't move, child." George Wu reached out and pressed a hand onto his shoulder. That hand was withered and icy, yet it carried an unquestionable authority. "These seven 'Soul-Locking Nails' are saving your life. They have locked your boiling bloodlines and sealed the curse. If I hadn't pinned them in, you would have already burned into a pile of charred ash in that karmic fire, with not even a soul left behind."
Linda sat to the side, her face looking extremely haggard in the candlelight. "Ethan, listen to George Wu. This is the only way for now."
As the seven soul-locking nails settled into his body, the scorching sensation that had been about to burst his blood vessels receded like a falling tide. The hideous red lines on his skin recoiled into the depths like a startled nest of snakes.
Immediately following this, because the dark-teal nails had absorbed an overload of heat, they shattered instantly. The previously scorched skin, along with the bloody holes left by the nails, miraculously peeled away rapidly, replaced by newborn, healthy pink skin.
"It's suppressed for now, but next time, I can't guarantee I can bring you back." George Wu wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and turned to look at Linda. "I'm going to activate the teleportation array immediately. His power has awakened; it can no longer be sealed. Only by sending him back to Kunlun Nexus will he have a slim chance at survival."
Linda sat in the dim shadows, her face as pale as a corpse. The secrets she had hidden for fourteen years were completely exposed tonight.
"Ethan, listen." Linda grasped his hand, her fingertips trembling. "Time is short. The curse inside you has been activated. Your lifespan is entering a countdown."
"What the hell is going on?" Ethan stared at her intently. He was fed up with riddles; he wanted a single answer now. "The fire inside me… tell me the truth."
"All of this," Linda hesitated for a moment before speaking the ancient story, "traces back to our sin-stained ancestor—Chen Wuji."