Chapter 2: With glasses he is a gentleman, without glasses… he is not a human being!
Half an hour later, Lin Hao walked out of the abandoned factory, leaving behind several lifeless "farm tools" — low-level demonic thralls created by HYDRA's failed occult experiments. Their twisted faces were frozen in horror. There were no visible wounds; they had died from pure terror, their souls devoured by the dark entity bound to Lin Hao's mark.
Within that same half hour, the corrupted thralls had been drained of their demonic essence — fuel for the Big Devil's power.
Lin Hao strolled out of the San Francisco slums as if walking through his own courtyard. Having spent years infiltrating the West Coast's black-market underworld, he knew every street corner by heart. Perhaps it was the darkest hour before dawn; even the looters who usually prowled for "zero-dollar shopping" had vanished into sleep. Not a single "fish" was left for him to catch.
"Fortunately, there's no empty-handed taxi tonight." With a calm smile, "Fisherman" Lin Hao flagged down a yellow cab.
The driver was an honest, weary old man, who — unlike the others Lin Hao had met that night — reached the destination alive.
He drove Lin Hao to a secluded manor overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the western edge of San Francisco, not far from the ruins of Stark's old Malibu estate.
Yes, the driver was safe.
The gatekeeper at the manor seemed to have been expecting him. The old butler had waited the entire night, standing motionless beneath the iron arch that bore the crest of the Shenlei Bureau.
The manor wasn't grand — less than three acres in size — but its isolation gave it the presence of an old European castle, built during the days when Howard Stark's generation of scientists dabbled in both technology and the occult.
As Lin Hao entered the main hall, the heavy oak doors closed behind him with a deep groan. The supposed "owner" of the estate jogged forward respectfully, his movements rigid yet deferential.
"Master, you've finally arrived."
The other servants bowed in unison. None showed surprise or emotion — their eyes were glassy, their gestures mechanical. They were not human but synthetic drones created from Lin Hao's own designs.
"The meal has been prepared for you, sir."
"Please, go inside first."
A maid-drone took Lin Hao's coat and windbreaker.
He removed his black-framed glasses, ruffled his hair, and sprayed it lightly. Instantly, his demeanor shifted — from scholar to predator.
There was an old saying within S.H.I.E.L.D. — a rumor whispered even by Nick Fury himself:
> "When the Demon King wears glasses, he's a gentleman. When he takes them off… he's not human anymore."
As Lin Hao ascended the staircase, his face subtly morphed. His height increased, his shoulders broadened, and the contours of his body re-shaped.
He wasn't changing. He was reverting.
This was Lin Hao's true form — the unmasked face of the "Demon King," once classified as an Omega-level anomaly in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database.
Only four people alive knew the truth: Zheng Xian — his superior at the Shenlei Bureau, his long-lost parents who vanished in a Hydra raid, and Lin Hao himself. Everyone else had only ever seen his false persona — the mild-mannered researcher embedded within S.H.I.E.L.D.'s scientific division.
For ten years, he had maintained that disguise, subtly altering his facial structure over time to simulate aging and transformation. By now, even facial recognition AIs in Stark Industries failed to match the two versions as the same man.
Five years ago, he had deployed a "stand-in" in San Francisco — a biologically engineered clone using his real face. Tonight, Lin Hao was simply reclaiming that identity.
He entered the study upstairs, his double trailing behind him. Once the door closed, Lin Hao tapped the back of his left hand. A faint crimson sigil pulsed beneath the skin — the Demon Mark, a remnant of his contract with Mephisto during the Siberian incident mentioned in Chapter 1.
Dark energy spread from the mark, and an enormous shadow emerged — a horned devil with burning scarlet eyes and a jagged trident, its image drawn straight from Western theology and Hell's iconography.
"Do you want power? Fame? Eternal youth? Or perhaps…" the demon's voice echoed in countless tones at once, "…your name sung by angels before they fall?"
"Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west — never underestimate a man reborn from Hell!"
"Tread the South Sky… and shatter Heaven itself!"
"Hehehe… hand over your soul!"
Lin Hao frowned, unimpressed. He swung his fist.
"Acting crazy again?"
The colossal figure deflated like a balloon, shrinking into a tiny black sphere barely thirty centimeters tall. Its round body had three white slits for eyes and a mouth; two small floating orbs acted as its hands, one gripping a miniature trident.
Tiny horns poked out of its spherical head.
"Wuwuwu…" The little devil's eyes welled up, forming exaggerated teardrops.
"Master, you hit me again…"
No one but Lin Hao could see or hear it.
"Open your mouth."
The creature obediently opened wide, and a rectangular light gate appeared in the air. Lin Hao and his double stepped through it.
Inside was a vast underground lab — a fusion of demonic and human technology, half Hellforge, half Stark reactor. Darkness dominated the outer edges, but the central area glowed brightly with the hum of steampunk-style machines.
The stand-in walked toward a glass tank, disrobed, and submerged himself in the dark fluid. His form dissolved, reverting into base genetic material.
Next to him, Lin Hao opened another pod. From within emerged a new artificial human — identical to Lin Hao's previous disguise from the flight to the U.S. The clone stumbled, then quickly stabilized.
"Good. From now on, you'll be called Zheng Xiaoxian. You'll manage the gardens here."
Meanwhile, across the ocean in the Ring Fortress, Director Zheng Xian sneezed violently. The orchid scissors in his hand slipped, slicing a perfect leaf in half.
His eyes narrowed. "Damn Lin Hao… even oceans away, he still messes with me!"
The passport used for Lin Hao's flight bore the alias "Zheng Xiaoxian." All background data for that identity had been carefully forged — a gardener hired for this estate through SHIELD's civilian registry.
Once Zheng Xiaoxian left the visible world, Lin Hao proceeded deeper into his laboratory. The machinery around him was crude yet powerful — relics salvaged from Tony Stark's Mark I era and modified with demonic enchantments. They were capable of crafting bio-synthetic humans beyond even Stark or Banner's current reach.
At the center of the lab, three glass display cases gleamed. Inside them rested: a severed arm laced with Asgardian runes, a grotesque elongated head split at the top like a forked tongue, and… a pair of white cotton panties printed with cartoon patterns — a "trophy" from one of his absurd interdimensional trips.
Lin Hao was twenty-eight years old. When he first awakened in this universe, he believed he had merely reincarnated. He planned to leverage his future knowledge to earn billions — until he stumbled upon a black-and-white photograph in a junior-high history textbook labeled "Captain America."
The realization shattered him.
It wasn't fiction. It was this world's past.
And the man in that photo looked unmistakably like Chris Evans. No government would canonize an actor as a national hero — unless this truly was the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That meant one thing: in 2018, Thanos, the "Director of Universal Family Planning," would snap his fingers — and half of all life would vanish.
Even if Lin Hao built an empire, he'd still be gambling his existence on a 50% chance.
How could anyone live knowing the exact year they'd die?
What's worse — dying rich, without even spending it all?
At that moment, Lin Hao decided he would defy fate itself.
That was when his plug-in activated — the contract with the wandering imp that could travel across the multiverse and bring him fragments of other worlds.
That day, the Demon King of Marvel was born.