The Heavenly Demon's Bakery - Chapter 1

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Chapter 001
Prologue
“This outfit…”
It was a T-shirt in vivid red with a black devil logo slapped right on the front.
What Jin-hyeok was wearing right now was that ridiculous, bright red tee. He remembered it clearly. His mum had bought a massive box of them ages ago, long after they’d stopped being popular, and just gave them to him as pyjamas. Over fifty identical shirts—the kind of utterly pointless clothes that would get him immediately labelled a fashion disaster if he ever wore one outside.
The World Cup was in Korea back in 2002, the Red Devils shirts were all the rage, and his mum had bought them wholesale. She’d heard they were cheap but hadn’t bothered to check what they actually were, just bought the entire stack. His dad never let her live that down.
Memories from over a hundred years ago. Im Jin-hyeok stood there, carefully piecing together those faded recollections. He blinked, trying to see if the world in front of him was real or just a dream.
BAM.
His father threw the door open without bothering to knock. Standing there, his father was roaring, his wrinkled face worn out and tired.
“I told you we were heading to the bakery together today, didn’t I!”
His father’s eyebrows and hair were white. Bulky and round-bellied, he was also wearing a Red Devils T-shirt, which made him look like a Santa Claus who’d had a very close encounter with a pair of shears.
“Father?”
Im Jin-hyeok frantically searched his memory. He checked the mirror again. His hair was shaved ridiculously short. It was the buzzcut of a sergeant who had just been discharged from the military.
He remembered this day.
It was the day he regretted and agonized over countless times later in life. The day after his discharge, his father had told him to start working at the bakery.
I remember the huge row we had that day.
Im Jin-hyeok hadn’t gone. He’d done two years of non-stop hard labor in the military; surely, he deserved a single day off. He thought it was nothing, a minor issue. But it wasn’t.
His father went out alone, tripped over a stone, and was badly injured. He tore a ligament and was told he wouldn’t be able to use his right arm properly for an entire year.
While his father was in the hospital, his mother and he had to run the shop. They just couldn’t replicate the taste of the bread his father baked. Customers gradually disappeared. To make matters worse, a chain bakery moved in right across the street. Their sales plummeted so low they couldn’t even pay the rent anymore.
His father, certain he could fix everything once his ligament healed, borrowed money from loan sharks, even using their home as collateral. In the end, they lost both the shop and the house to the debt collectors.
A year after his discharge, his father’s arm still hadn’t healed. His mother, who nursed his father every day, occasionally coughed up phlegm mixed with bl00d but refused to go to the doctor, saying the expense wasn’t worth it. On the day of his father’s follow-up, he insisted on bringing his mother along for a simple check-up.
On the way back from the hospital, the phone rang. He got the news that his mother had cancer. That’s when his father lost his balance at a pedestrian crossing and stumbled. Im Jin-hyeok shoved his father out of the way and took the hit from the truck himself.
No way. I had no idea I’d end up in a completely different world after that…
After being struck by the truck, he lay in a vegetative state for three years. He wanted to die, but he didn’t. As he lay in the hospital, sucking up all the family’s resources like a black hole, his family was completely ruined. In that awful place that felt like an eternity, his soul was somehow transported to the Murim—the world of martial arts. To this day, he still didn’t know the exact reason.
Perhaps he’d finally figure it out if he reached the Demon Immortal realm, a legendary stage even in the Murim.
Goodness… Soul dimensional travel. And now, time regression. What in the blazes is happening to me? It’s been decades since I first woke up in the body of a Sun-Moon Divine Cult trainee.
After his soul shifted to the Murim, it possessed the body of a Sun-Moon Divine Cult trainee. There, he had to endure brutal training where death was a daily threat. Not only that, but he was later given the name ‘Dosan Sword-Forest’ and lived a life constantly on the brink of death.
After decades of struggle and adventure, he eventually became the Cult Leader of the Sun-Moon Divine Cult. And it had been yet another few decades since he earned the title of Heavenly Demon.
Though he hadn’t achieved the ultimate Transcendent Demon realm, he had entered the Supreme Demon realm and was widely known as the Greatest Demon under Heaven.
Im Jin-hyeok shook his head, clearing his mind of those past events. That was the other world’s business. In this, his original world, he’d even regressed into the past.
Did some great, cosmic Providence give me a second chance…? Why though?
The Sun-Moon Divine Cult wasn’t a standard martial arts group. It was a religious order that commanded powerful sorcerers proficient in spells, hexes, and immortal arts.
As the Cult Leader of such a faction, Im Jin-hyeok knew many secrets unknown to ordinary people. One of them was the existence of a great ‘Providence’.
The entity is often called the Absolute God. He had come to understand its reality during his time in the Murim.
Still. Without reaching the Transcendent Demon realm, I won’t understand even a tiny piece of that secret. And frankly, that’s not what matters right now.
Im Jin-hyeok took a deep, steadying breath, pushing the distracting thoughts away. That wasn’t what was important.
The truth was, even after spending countless decades in the Murim, he hadn’t forgotten them. In fact, he’d longed for them more desperately than ever.
Family!
And that family was standing right in front of him.
His father. Alive. Not yet deceased.
Even if his father had been injured, things would have been okay if Jin-hyeok had just gone to the bakery earlier and learned the trade by helping him. But he hadn’t. His father’s baking was completely different from the theories he learned at culinary school. When he used to boast that his professor’s methods were better, his father would just laugh and nod. But when his father was in the hospital, all those theories from school were useless. He couldn’t reproduce his father’s unique flavor.
He should have gone with his father that day.
He should have learned his father’s techniques beforehand.
He should have taken out a cancer insurance policy for his mother.
As their finances worsened, they had cancelled all insurance policies and used the money to pay off the debts.
His regrets always circled back to that initial moment. If only he could go back with his father on that day, he felt he could sell his soul to the devil. Amidst the malicious training that hollowed out a person’s spirit, the only thing he missed was his family. He endured, driven by the thought of somehow surviving and getting back to his parents.
This was his father after twenty-something years. His vision blurred with tears. Im Jin-hyeok slowly spoke.
“Father. I’m sorry.”
It was an apology decades overdue. Im Jin-hyeok wiped his eyes.
“I’ll get changed. Let’s go to the bakery right now.”
“Well, I’ll be! The army really did make a man out of you!”
Jin-hyeok muttered under his breath.
No, not the army. The Murim.
Im Jin-hyeok followed his father and stepped out of the room. But his father’s expression was strange.
“Are you seriously planning to go out like that?”
“You told me to go straight away.”
“Put some trousers on!”
Ah, right. Clothes. Clothes were essential. What he was wearing now was a tacky red T-shirt and boxer shorts—basically just his underwear. Im Jin-hyeok looked down at his bare legs and finally frowned. Thanks to the military, he had some muscle, but to a warrior who had reached the Life-and-Death Realm, this body was pitiful.
My word, look at this body, he thought, a wry smile touching his lips.
He was reminded of his twenty-two-year-old, freshly-discharged rookie days. The body he had considered insignificant. In truth, it was the best physical condition he had been in during his twenty-six short years of life. Fresh out of the military, the regular routine and exercise meant his condition was peak. He just didn’t realise it then.
He went back into the room to pick out clothes. He thought about his father’s face he had just seen. So young.
I always thought my father didn’t understand me because he was old.
Now, he looked younger than even the Grand Master Gwangpok, Bl00d-Worm. He might even be younger than Im Jin-hyeok himself, who was thrown into the Murim world at twenty-six and lived for decades.
I’ll just have to be the bigger man and try to understand Father.
He opened a drawer. He yanked it too hard, and the entire thing came completely off its runners. Cables, wires, and adapters inside went flying.
Im Jin-hyeok instantly shot out his right hand and caught every single object before it hit the floor.
That much is trivial.
It was a feat impossible before the regression. His body was that of twenty-six-year-old Im Jin-hyeok, but the skills he had honed over decades remained. Im Jin-hyeok inspected the underside of the drawer. Parallel metal strips were attached to both sides to ensure it moved smoothly on the rails.
Drawer rails. They use rails inside dressers in this age to make them open smoothly.
The mother-of-pearl inlaid chest he used in the Murim was custom-made by the finest carpenter, yet it didn’t open this smoothly. He still couldn’t quite feel how much force was needed to open a modern drawer. He put the drawer on the floor and tried opening another one.
It was stuffed with CDs, DVDs, and old cassette tapes. It was thick with dust, clearly untouched for years. He frowned and looked around.
Clothes. I need to find clothes.
His usual attire was the Cult Leader’s ceremonial robe. He’d wear the Heavenly Silk Robe underneath and eight layers of silk on top. Since the clothes were layered with specific, runic patterns, not a single piece could be left out. After he became the Cult Leader, it was impossible to even go out in simple martial arts clothes.
Gosh, I missed just getting dressed simply.
He looked around and faced the mirror. A small handle was visible next to it. Im Jin-hyeok in the reflection smiled.
“There you are.”
When he pulled the handle, the mirrored door smoothly slid open. Inside the cupboard hung T-shirts and trousers. What should he wear?
“Hmm.”
He hadn’t chosen his own clothes for decades. It felt strange to say, but he was a Cult Leader. There was an entire department dedicated to his wardrobe. Women would bring his entire outfit—including shoes, crown, belt, and robes—on silk cushions every morning. He scratched his head.
“Any old thing will do, surely.”
He wasn’t heading out for a duel to the death with Namgung So-cheon, nor was it an inauguration ceremony for a new Cult Leader. It wasn’t even the selection of his successor. He was simply going to his father’s bakery, where he used to help every day before he joined the army.
The bakery?
At the bakery, he definitely needed to wear white clothes. He couldn’t just wear anything. But he couldn’t remember what that specific garment was called.
“White things. White Hand. Minor Fiend Martial Art. No, that’s not right.”
Im Jin-hyeok held his head, thinking, then dug through the wardrobe. Military uniform, red T-shirts, more red T-shirts, a university jacket, a neon yellow windbreaker, black tracksuits. But nowhere was there a white outfit. Just then, his father yelled from outside.
“How much longer are you going to take getting dressed?”