Wearing Glasses Makes One Refined, Taking Them Off Makes One a Beast!

Chapter 2: With Glasses On, a Gentleman; With Them Off... Not Human!

Half an hour later, Lin Hao walked out of the abandoned factory, leaving behind several corpses of farm tools with twisted faces. They bore no wounds on their bodies—they had died from sheer terror.

In that half hour, the farm tools had been thoroughly tormented, drained dry by the Great Demon Lord without a drop left.

Navigating out of the slums with practiced ease, Lin Hao seemed very familiar with the roads of San Francisco. Perhaps it was the darkest hour before dawn, when even the trash busy with "zero-dollar shopping" at night had fallen into deep sleep. Along the way, he didn't manage to hook any other fish.

"At least I didn't come back empty-handed," the angler Lin Hao muttered as he hailed another taxi.

The driver was an honest old man who safely delivered Lin Hao to a manor on the west side of San Francisco, facing the Pacific Ocean.

Yes, the driver made it out safely.

The manor's gatekeeper seemed to have known Lin Hao was coming, having waited all night for him.

This manor wasn't large—covering less than three acres—and was utterly unremarkable compared to those sprawling estates of dozens or even hundreds of acres.

When Lin Hao entered the castle-like main residence and the door closed behind him, the manor's owner actually trotted up to greet him respectfully: "Master, you've finally arrived."

The other servants showed no surprise at this scene; they all bowed to Lin Hao, though their expressions were wooden and their movements mechanical.

"Your meal has been prepared."

"Let's go inside first."

A servant stepped forward to take Lin Hao's luggage and the trench coat he had removed.

Taking off his glasses and running his hand through his hair with gel, his hairstyle immediately changed.

There had always been a rumor in S.P.E.A.R.: when the Great Demon Lord wore glasses, he was a gentleman; when he took them off... he wasn't human!

As he walked toward the stairs, Lin Hao's face began to subtly shift, and even his stature grew taller and broader.

In the end, he had transformed into the exact same appearance as the manor's owner.

This wasn't a change—it was a restoration.

This was Lin Hao's true form.

Only four people in the world could connect his current appearance with the one from moments ago: Zheng Xian, his direct superior, and Lin Hao's parents.

Beyond them, every colleague who had interacted with him in S.P.E.A.R. had only ever seen the deliberately disguised version of Lin Hao.

Ever since joining S.P.E.A.R. ten years ago, Lin Hao had deliberately disguised himself, gradually altering his features to follow other growth trends—subtle and imperceptible, until it naturally culminated in a completely different appearance known to others.

A doppelgänger using his original face had already arrived in San Francisco five years ago and had been running things here ever since.

Lin Hao was merely reclaiming that identity now.

He went upstairs to the study with the doppelgänger. Once the doppelgänger closed the door, Lin Hao patted the back of his left hand, where a demonic pattern was visible to no one but himself.

A dense blackness once again seeped out: a pitch-black body, crimson eyes, curved horns, and a black pitchfork in hand—perfectly matching the Western cultural image of a demon.

"Do you want to get rich? Do you want overnight fame? Do you want a romantic streak? Do you want eternal youth?"

"Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west—don't bully a youth for being poor!"

"Trample the Southern Heaven, shatter the Jade Palace!"

"Hehehe, give me your soul!"

Watching the demon's big mouth open and close nonstop, spouting these lines, Lin Hao's face darkened. He reached out and smacked it hard.

"Acting stupid again, huh?"

The massive demon immediately shrank into a black ball less than thirty centimeters tall. Its round body had three white slits—its eyes and mouth.

On either side of the little round demon, two smaller black spheres floated in midair—its hands. The right one clutched a tiny trident.

Two arrow-shaped horns were stuck on top of the ball.

"Wah wah wah..." The little demon's eyes suddenly turned into watery puddles, with teardrop-shaped streaks hanging at the edges.

Master, you hit me...

Without Lin Hao's consent, outsiders couldn't see the demon or hear its voice.

"Alright, open your mouth."

The pitiful little demon suddenly stretched its mouth wide, and a rectangular light gate abruptly appeared in the study.

Lin Hao walked through it, and the doppelgänger followed.

Once inside, Lin Hao bent down to pick up a tape recorder from the ground and casually pressed the switch, finally putting an end to the bizarre lines.

The sounds coming from the little demon's mouth earlier weren't its own—they were from the tape recorder, like a Bumblebee with a hoarse voice.

The little demon wasn't mute, but it could only produce simple syllables.

For example: wah wah wah, eep eep eep, smack smack smack, and so on.

Inside the gate was a vast, unknown area. Darkness shrouded most of it, with only the entrance brightly lit. In that illuminated space sat a large array of experimental and production equipment.

After the doppelgänger entered, he walked over to a glass tank on one side, stripped off his clothes, and stepped into an unknown liquid. Within moments, his muscles and bones began to dissolve, reverting to the material that had created him.

Lin Hao opened a nearby cultivation pod, and from it stepped an artificial human with the same appearance he had used on the plane. The moment it took a step, it stumbled slightly but quickly adjusted.

"Good. From now on, your name is Zheng Xiaoxian. You'll be in charge of tending the manor's gardens."

Far across the ocean, inside the Ring Fortress, Zheng Xian suddenly sneezed. His hand jerked, and the pruning shears snipped clean through a perfectly good orchid leaf.

His wide eyes instantly narrowed into slits, his features scrunching up as if his very heart and soul ached.

"Damn it, Lin Hao. Even after you're gone, you won't let me have a moment's peace!"

For no reason at all, that insufferable bastard popped into his head.

The passport name Lin Hao had used to buy his plane ticket was Zheng Xiaoxian. Every detail of that identity was traceable, and his trip to San Francisco was because a friend had hooked him up with a gardener job at this estate.

After Zheng Xiaoxian left, Lin Hao kept walking. Every piece of production equipment he passed had a rough, anachronistic style—a clear steampunk aesthetic.

And yet, these very machines could manufacture androids that modern technology couldn't even dream of.

At the center of the experimental site, three elegant glass display cases stood before Lin Hao. Inside them were a severed arm, a massive head with a forked top, and... a pair of plain cotton briefs printed with cartoon patterns.

Lin Hao was twenty-eight years old. When he first arrived in this world, he thought he'd simply been reborn. He planned to use his foreknowledge of the future to get rich, rake in a few hundred small goals, when he suddenly spotted a black-and-white photo in a middle school history textbook. Beneath it were the words "Captain America."

At that moment, Lin Hao was stunned for a long time.

If it were just a comic book, he could still hold out hope for confirmation. But to blatantly put it in a history textbook—even the most arrogant banana couldn't pull that off.

What's more, the guy in the black-and-white photo looked more and more like Chris Evans. No country would be stupid enough to treat an actor as a historical figure and stuff him into a textbook.

After the shock wore off, Lin Hao finally realized the world he was in was the Marvel Universe—and specifically, the cinematic universe.

That meant in 2018, Director Thanos of the Universal Population Control Bureau would snap his fingers and randomly erase half of all life in the universe.

Which meant even if he made hundreds or thousands of small goals in the future, Lin Hao would still have to gamble his life on that fifty-fifty chance.

How was he supposed to live like this?

Knowing his own death date, sitting around waiting day by day—and worse, if he died and his money wasn't spent... that would be even more painful!

At that moment, Lin Hao realized he had to defy fate and change his destiny.

And at that same moment, Lin Hao's cheat code went online.

He got a Little Devil—one that could travel across the myriad worlds and, along the way, snatch a few things back.