Bones popped, splintered, and cracked with the sound of dry kindling as Ethan moved through the mob. He wasn't just defeating them; he was meticulously disabling them, ensuring none would walk away from this fight whole. He was a force of natural disaster unleashed upon a mortal crowd.

Ethan stopped abruptly, the last five attackers recoiling in pure terror. He took a deep, steadying breath, his muscular chest rising and falling slowly, without a bead of sweat. He pointed a steady finger at the man whose knee he had shattered—the one who spoke Vincent's name—who was now whimpering on the ground.

"You said Vincent sent you, right?" Ethan demanded, his voice dangerously low. "Come with me. You're going to tell me everything."

"Clean up the trash," Ethan commanded, his voice devoid of warmth. "If any of this filth is still here when I finish, I'll deal with you next."

The five survivors among the thirty-man mob, trembling and clutching their wounds, scrambled to follow Ethan's command.

As the injured men were dragged away, the large inmate who had named Vincent tried desperately to crawl on his elbows, leaving a trail of blood and shattered bone behind him. Ethan moved faster than the eye could follow, grabbed the man's broken leg, and dragged him violently into the confines of his cell.

"You and I are going to have a private conversation," Ethan said, kicking the cell door shut.

The man screamed in pain and terror. Ethan didn't give him time to recover. He ripped a strip of cloth from the man's torn shirt and quickly blindfolded him, pulling the fabric tight.

"I have tools for this," Ethan whispered, his voice cold and close to the man's ear. "Tools that use electricity. The blindfold is so you can't see them. You just need to feel them."

Ethan's body moved with the precision of a torturer from a cheap B-movie, a genre he was intimately familiar with. He needed to break the man quickly, making him believe he was dealing with equipment far more sophisticated than just a bare fist.

Ethan concentrated his focus, generating a tiny, high-frequency jolt of electricity—the Elemental Mastery disguised as technology. He pressed his fingers against the inmate's temple.

The resulting scream was immediately muffled by the prison noise, but within the cell, it was absolute agony. The man thrashed wildly, his muscles seizing up as the lightning, controlled to inflict maximum pain without permanent damage, targeted his nervous system.

"Who paid you?" Ethan's voice was a flat command over the man's suffering.

Ethan pulled the electricity back, then unleashed a flurry of rapid, focused strikes using the Dao Martial Technique of the Fist, targeting the man's kidneys and spleen. The inmate coughed up blood.

Ethan then grabbed the man's head, shoved it into the cell toilet, and held it under the filthy water, simulating drowning. The man choked and gargled, his terror reaching a physical peak. Ethan pulled him up just before he passed out, allowing him a desperate, ragged gasp of air.

"The name! Tell me the name!"

The inmate was a broken, sobbing mess. "Vance... and Halbert! They—they made a deal! To kill you! When they couldn't kill you here because of your guards... they paid to have them transferred out! To leave you alone!"

Ethan grabbed the man's jaw, his expression darkening further. "I already knew that, you idiot!" He delivered a crushing backhand that fractured the man's nose, sending him skidding across the concrete floor. "Don't give me useless information! Tell me how they contacted you, how much they paid, and who else is involved in this prison! Who is the mole!"

The man whimpered, tasting the blood pouring from his nose and lips. "I... I don't know more! I swear! They paid... they paid our leader, 'El Diablo'! He said he got a stack... a lot of cash! We just had to wait for the guards to disappear!"

Ethan subjected him to another round of controlled electrical jolts, this time focusing the pain through the man's teeth, making him bite down on his own tongue. The agony was immense, but the man continued to sob the same refrain: he truly didn't know the specifics. His usefulness had reached its limit.

With a disgusted grunt, Ethan dragged the man by his good arm to the cell door. He kicked the door open and threw the inmate's broken body into the middle of the empty corridor.

The inmate, overwhelmed by pain and fear, instantly urinated himself, the dark stain spreading rapidly on the gray uniform.

Ethan stepped out of his cell, looking down at the quivering man, then slowly scanned the silent, fear-stricken cell block. Every inmate was pressed against the far wall of their cell, pretending they couldn't see anything.

Ethan roared, his voice cutting through the unnatural silence of the prison block.

"Remember, I'm not locked in here with you! You are locked in here with me!"

With the final declaration echoing off the walls, Ethan turned and walked away from the terrified crowd and the mutilated body, heading toward a specific cell further down the corridor.

When he reached it, a powerful man covered in intricate Aztec tattoos was sitting calmly inside, a grim smile fixed on his face.

This was "El Diablo."

Ethan delivered a furious kick to the cell door. The thick metal vibrated violently but did not yield; El Diablo had been expecting him and had locked himself in.

"I thought we had a deal, Diablo," Ethan said, his voice dangerously low. "I wouldn't screw you over for being a traitor, and you'd stay on your side."

El Diablo laughed, a harsh, rasping sound. "You took my gang and expected me to do nothing, you damn rich kid?"

"You expect to stay locked in there forever?" Ethan challenged.

"It's not necessary," El Diablo sneered, leaning closer to the bars. "I just need a little time. The dog is very vicious, and they are coming to castrate him. If I were you, I'd pray they don't catch you, or you'll end up screwed."

As he finished speaking, El Diablo gathered saliva and spat directly at Ethan's face.

Ethan swiftly dodged the spittle. Exploiting the sudden proximity, he shot his hand between the bars, grabbed El Diablo by the collar of his shirt, and violently pulled, smashing the man's face against the steel bars with a sickening crunch.

"Maybe things will go badly for me," Ethan hissed, his eyes glowing faintly blue. "But believe me, you won't be around to see it."

Without pity, Ethan channeled the elemental energy of the lightning, flooding the man's body with a fatal surge. El Diablo's body seized up, his eyes rolling back as his heart instantly stopped.

He fell to the floor, convulsing for a few brief seconds.

Ethan laughed, the sound cold and purely mirthless, as he turned and walked away, leaving the corpse lying inside the locked cell.

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