Acquiring the Murim with Money - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 1. A House on the Brink of Delisting

The Underground Parking Garage was silent.
He was reaching for the car door, about to attend a celebration for the successful M&A of a distribution company worth hundreds of billions, when it happened.
Thwack—!
A terrible pain tore through his spine.
“Guh…”
Gang Tae-seok swallowed the hot blood pouring from his mouth and collapsed to the floor. When he turned his head, he saw a young man trembling with a bloody knife in his grip.
A familiar face. An employee of a subcontractor whose company had dissolved as a result of a hostile M&A he’d orchestrated months earlier.
“You! Because of you… I lost my job and the woman I was going to marry left me! My life is ruined because of you. You heartless bastard!”
The young man’s cry echoed off the garage walls.
A self-mocking smile crossed Tae-seok’s lips.
It had been a legal M&A. In capitalist society, the strong devour the weak—it was the rule, and he’d simply played by it. If anyone deserved blame, it was the incompetent, irresponsible chairman of that company, not him.
But as blood drained away and his vision blurred, a crushing emptiness washed over him before any sense of injustice could take hold.
‘I have over a billion won coming in today alone.’
He’d skipped lunch that day too, ordering delivery to save time. He’d lived obsessed with work his entire life. Addicted to the thrill of accumulating wealth, he’d never actually used any of it for himself.
Terrified of being trampled without money, he’d hoarded it like a monster, yet he was no master of his fortune—merely the most devoted cog in the vast machine of capitalism, a slave to it all.
‘If I’d known I’d die like this… I should’ve spent that money without a second thought.’
Bitter regret flooded through his life of being hunted by money.
Then a small metal object tumbled from Tae-seok’s pocket, rolling across the pool of blood.
A golden metal fragment he’d acquired by chance months ago. It was covered in mysterious patterns, and ever since he’d held it, things had gone strangely well for him.
He’d known it was probably coincidence, but he couldn’t bring himself to let it go.
The moment blood seeped into the patterns, it blazed with light.
Geometric numbers and golden brilliance flooded his vision, and the world went completely dark.

[User Gang Tae-seok’s life asset value has been nullified.]
[Liquidating remaining assets……]
[Initiating transfer to an alternate dimension for soul bankruptcy rehabilitation procedures.]

* * *

Beep—
His consciousness couldn’t tell if this was a dream or reality. The moment sensation returned, his head felt like it was being crushed.
As awareness settled in, a coppery, sweat-and-blood stench assaulted his nose.
‘What a stink. Too vivid to be a dream… Am I alive?’
Despite the shocking situation, he felt neither resentment nor fear. Gang Tae-seok had always been this way—when something major happened, assessing the situation came before emotion.
And the current situation was—
“Hey, Baek Unhui! You bastard. Acting dead after one punch? Answer me!”
A rough hand seized his collar and yanked him upright. His body swung into the air.
‘Baek Unhui. That’s the name of this body?’
Though the situation made no sense, memories of Baek Unhui flooded in with surprising naturalness—fragments of knowledge settling into place like scattered pieces.
The youngest son of a flourishing merchant house. Caught between a stern father and brilliant older siblings, Baek Unhui had pursued an ordinary life, and even minor mistakes were enough to earn him the reputation of a wastrel.
Then, three years ago, when “that” incident occurred and his father collapsed, and even the older brother he’d trusted disappeared, Baek Unhui became a true wastrel.
His second sibling, Baek Yeon-hwa, had worked desperately alone with the merchant house despite her inexperience, but the company slid toward bankruptcy regardless.
And now, a hyena who’d smelled that crisis had him by the collar.
‘The thug choking me out—this foul-mouthed lump—is Cho Sik, the action captain of the Hei She Bang.’
“A thousand copper coins by today! Can’t pay? We’re taking every last inch of the merchant house’s remaining land. You see this clearly? Your thumbprint on this contract—you made it yourself!”
‘Reborn straight into a loan shark’s grip. This is just like my past life. Money troubles again.’
By Baek Unhui’s memory, the amount demanded was impossible to raise in this situation.
His older brother Baek Unjol. When he’d disappeared years ago, he’d taken the last emergency funds the family had left. It was complete, utter bankruptcy.
‘A thousand copper coins…’
Gang Tae-seok—or rather, Baek Unhui—turned the number over in his mind.
‘… That’s not so bad, actually.
A valuation this depressed is almost interesting. The Baek Cloud Merchant House was now a textbook case of a failing enterprise.

Stock price bottomed out, debt through the roof, management vanished. The Tae-seok of his previous life used to hunt down companies like this. He’d buy in when everyone else was cutting losses, claw value back up somehow, and sell for profit. It had been his specialty.
Cho Sik hurled him to the ground. He stumbled backward and caught sight of a broken mirror shard in the corner of the Warehouse.
The face reflected beneath disheveled hair was far younger and more handsome than his former self.
Already bleeding from a blow to the head, with the drawn, pallid look of someone deep in drink, he was nonetheless tall and lean, with sharp features and a strong jawline that still held definition.
‘A-grade mask, too. Very nice.’
In his previous life, Gang Tae-seok hadn’t succeeded merely because he excelled at financial knowledge and obsessed over money. The survival instinct that let him claw his way through any situation—that was the true force sustaining him.
His gaze naturally swept the surroundings.
A habit. In any circumstance, the first thing was to identify what card he could actually play.
And then something caught at the edge of his vision.
A metal plate fragment, caked in dust.
‘Why is that here?’
The size was larger, the carved patterns different, but it was something he recognized. Gang Tae-seok reached toward it instinctively. Blood flowing from his wound seeped into the strange patterns engraved on the plate.
In that instant, a translucent blue window resembling a modern stock-trading interface materialized before his eyes.

[The obsession with ‘Capital’ and knowledge of ‘Wealth’ engraved upon your soul resonate with the ‘Celestial Gold Demonic Realm’.]
[Current Remaining Assets: -1,000 copper coins (critical capital erosion)]
[Set collateral to activate the Celestial Capital Art.]

‘Collateral? I don’t own a damn thing, so what collateral—!’
To Gang Tae-seok’s silent question, the metal plate trembled as though resonating, and a message drove directly into his skull.

[Loan Approved. The Golden Divine Eye, Value Depreciation, and Celestial Gold Throw are now unlocked.]
[Warning: Interest accrues. If you fail to achieve capital growth within seven days, the collateral (the caster’s soul) will be forcibly liquidated.]

‘Forced liquidation of the soul? These bastards are worse than loan sharks!’
But he felt no fear. He had lived as money’s slave and died meaninglessly, yes—but this time, he would simply avoid repeating those mistakes and become money’s master instead.
Then brilliant light erupted from the Celestial Gold Demonic Mirror Edition, sucking into his eyes.
In an instant, a scorching heat as though his brain were burning away, and the world began to appear as numbers.
‘Everything has a numerical value……’
Not just objects, but people—their worth reduced to figures. When he thought about it, there was nothing surprising in that at all.
The sudden bankruptcy.
His mother’s departure from his side, his father’s leap from the rooftop, friends who drifted away at the moment he needed them most—all of it.
In the end, it was all money. Gang Tae-seok had learned that truth at twenty, and never forgotten it since.
What remained was simple. Never trust people sincerely. Trust only numbers. And never yield to the world—succeed, no matter what.
Eventually he had clawed his way to the top, and people crowded around him again. But he had never let his true self show. Behind the mask, he was always alone. To protect himself, the more isolated he felt, the more obsessively he reduced others to money, to numbers.
That was how Gang Tae-seok lived without being wounded by the world.
“Has this bastard lost his mind? What are you staring at like an idiot!”
The moment Baek Unhui looked at Cho Sik, information about him and the flow of his vital energy analyzed themselves like a corporate financial statement.

[Target Analysis: Cho Sik (Action Captain, Black Snake Gang)]
[Target Value: Approximately 50 copper coins]
[Status & Notable Features: Martial Technique—Black Snake Bone Crushing Hand / Efficiency vs. Inner Energy Investment: 12% / Excessive expenditure detected]

Cho Sik swung the club forward with a curse, and red text flickered above it.

[Item: Old Ash Wood Club (Value: 5 copper coins)]
[Analysis: Microscopic fracture detected at first joint on left side. Upon impact, 80% probability of breakage.]

In any other moment, Baek Unhui would have taken the blow without even a scream, but now, to his eyes, the man’s movement played out like slow-motion video.
Baek Unhui swung the Celestial Gold Demonic Mirror Edition in his hand with all his strength, following the information visible before him. Cho Sik’s club, struck at its microscopic fracture point, shattered completely and flew apart.
Baek Unhui hooked Cho Sik’s frozen wrist as though possessed, and spoke aloud the incantation that appeared in his mind.
“Value Depreciation.”
Shhhhh!
A cool force poured from Baek Unhui’s palm, flowing through Cho Sik’s arm. Like a bubble economy bursting, Cho Sik’s inner energy began to dissipate temporarily.
“What? Why is my strength draining? My inner energy—what’s happening to it!”
Cho Sik staggered back in shock. But Baek Unhui, unable to control his power with a technique used for the first time, was near his own limit. His Dantian trembled as though emptied.
‘Damn. You really do need capital to run the operation.’
The Celestial Capital Art differed from ordinary martial techniques. Rather than slowly accumulating inner energy through cultivation, the capacity of one’s Dantian was determined by the ‘capital’ one possessed—brutally, capitalism incarnate as martial technique.
And Baek Unhui was broke. No matter how he looked at it, he had to try everything he could. Following the information that appeared in his mind, he drew out the single remaining copper coin from his pocket.

[Skill Activated: Celestial Gold Throw]
[Principle: Converts the ‘market value’ of the projectile into physical force and propels it.]

‘With no inner energy and just a 1-copper coin—can it even work?’
That’s when he caught sight of the Jade Necklace hanging around Cho Sik’s neck.

[Target Analysis: Jade Necklace / Value: 30 silver taels / Condition: Pristine]

‘That’s it!’
Baek Unhui flicked a copper coin.

[Celestial Gold Throw activated]

The coin whistled through the air with a sharp cutting sound, severing the necklace’s cord with perfect precision.
Thunk.
The moment Cho Sik faltered in shock, Baek Unhui lurched forward and snatched the fallen jade fragment from the ground. Without hesitation, he hurled it straight at Cho Sik’s brow.

[Celestial Gold Throw activated]
[Projectile Value: 30 silver taels → Converted to Physical Force]

Crack—
The jade fragment, charged with thirty taels’ worth of value, struck Cho Sik’s forehead dead center. The impact was far greater than he’d anticipated; he couldn’t even cry out before crashing backward.
“H-help! Captain Cho!”
Cho Sik’s men scrambled backward in terror. Baek Unhui, breathing heavily, gathered the shattered jade pieces from the ground.
‘Thirty taels in a single hit… the firepower’s good, but the value for money is terrible. I can already hear my money flying away.’

[Capital Updated: 0 taels → 10 taels (Jade Fragments Recovered)]
[Capital is power itself. Your Inner Energy capacity threshold has increased.]

Just then, the warehouse door shattered with a sharp blade’s edge.
“Unhui! Are you all right?”
A woman appeared, silhouetted against the brilliant moonlight.
At first glance, her plain martial robes and sharp presence drew attention away from her face, but upon closer inspection, she possessed a beauty as if a celestial maiden beneath the moon had descended wielding a sword.
She burst in with an air of confidence, then stopped short, sword still in hand, staring intently at Baek Unhui.
‘His aura has changed. Those eyes, gleaming with such sharpness… what on earth—?’
She regarded him with suspicion, then caught sight of Cho Sik’s collapsed form and her jaw went slack.
Baek Unhui brushed the dirt from his clothes and smiled at Baek Yeon-hwa—that smile he’d worn countless times in his past life, the one that read precisely what others wanted and gave it back to them.
“I’m fine. The self-defense technique you taught me happened to work. I was just about to wrap things up with conversation, actually. Don’t worry—please go ahead and leave first.”
After ushering the bewildered Baek Yeon-hwa out, Baek Unhui swept his gaze across the underlings’ pockets with the Golden Divine Eye and murmured softly.
“You lot carrying any money?”
The reborn corporate raider’s cold, pitiless first transaction in the Murim was about to begin.

Murim M&A Through Capital · Volume 1

Author
Song Jjwanbol
Publisher
Daon Creative
Planning / Editing / Production
Yoon Tae-ri
Cover
Sik

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260907057.0001

ⓒ2026, Song Jjwanbol

※ This e-book is a work protected under the Copyright Law of the Republic of Korea.
No part or whole of this work may be reproduced or modified in any form without the permission of the author and publisher.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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