Acquiring the Murim with Money - Chapter 3

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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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Chapter 3. Luoyang’s Greatest Patron

Whoosh—!
Baek Unhuei’s eyes blazed with an uncanny golden light. Jo Cheol felt a sudden, chilling sensation—as though he’d been stripped bare and placed on a scale for inspection.
When fighting Jo Sik, he’d only perceived the value of individual techniques: the Plane Tree Club Technique or the Black Snake Bone Technique. It felt like inspecting individual items in a corner shop. But now, facing Jo Cheol—a first-rate master and the leader of a gang—the dimension of information flooding his vision had shifted entirely.

[System Notice: Target’s capital magnitude (Internal Energy level) has exceeded threshold.]
[Analysis Mode Switching: ‘Individual Commodity Analysis’ → ‘Corporate Entity Comprehensive Valuation’]

‘Ah, so once the scale gets big enough, you stop treating it as a simple object and start evaluating it as a corporation, is that it?’
Baek Unhuei adapted quickly, befitting his past life as an M&A specialist. Jo Cheol himself began to be analyzed not as a single man, but as an enormous trading enterprise—a moving vessel of capital.

[Target Analysis: Jo Cheol, Leader of Heuksabang]
[Target Value: Approximately 1,500 Silver Taels (including management premium)]
[Status and Peculiarities: Aggressive leverage deployment in progress. Drawing excessive power beyond his fundamental Internal Energy.]
[Risk Factor: Over-leveraged right shoulder meridian. Seventy percent of total Internal Energy concentrates during attack, but recovery speed is critically slow (liquidity crisis imminent).]

It wasn’t merely observing a single technique in the opponent’s martial art—it was grasping the entire bodily structure and Internal Energy flow supporting that technique as a “financial structure.” This was the truly terrifying aspect of the Daechen Capital Arts.
“Baek Unhuei! So my useless younger brother owed you a debt. You’ve prepared the thousand taels, haven’t you?”
Jo Cheol’s roar sent dust erupting from the courtyard floor. Even beneath that overwhelming pressure, Baek Unhuei didn’t miss the red marker of “impaired assets” flickering across Jo Cheol’s right shoulder.
‘Nothing but a bloated husk—a zombie corporation. Today I’ll properly delist you from the market.’
Baek Unhuei’s mouth curved into a cold smile. Jo Cheol specialized in overpowering force and overwhelming aggression, but his Internal Energy flow was correspondingly lopsided.
That meant one thing: his risk management was nonexistent.
“Jo Cheol, I’ve purchased the thousand taels you owe to Geumsin Jundang. See? Here’s the Debt Transfer Certificate. I’m your creditor now. The thousand taels you owe me, and the thousand taels I owe you—we’re offsetting both. We’re settled. Call it even.”
In that instant, Baek Unhuei’s eyes blazed gold once more.
“You—you scheming little rat! What kind of nonsense is that!”
Jo Cheol’s face flushed crimson, a violent purple undertone creeping in. Modern financial techniques meant nothing to a man who’d lived his entire life by fist and blade.
“You dare mock me? Did you think that pathetic scrap of paper would be your protective charm? Here, the fist is always closer than the law. Just die!”
Jo Cheol unleashed a devastating punch, pouring his Internal Energy into it. The pressure was like a colossal boulder hurling through the air. Baek Unhuei’s breath caught; his heart felt crushed in a vise.
In direct confrontation, a single blow from Jo Cheol would shatter his skull. But Baek Unhuei possessed a hidden trump card his opponent knew nothing of.

[Available Capital Scale: 1,000 Silver Taels (acquired debt rights value)]
[System Activation: Converting asset rights to Internal Energy.]

He had no cash on hand, but the 1,000-tael rights he’d just secured transformed through the Daechen Capital Arts into an explosive surge of energy that swept through his entire body.
Baek Unhuei didn’t evade Jo Cheol’s fist—instead, he stared through its trajectory with piercing intensity. The Golden Heart Eye guided him to the “liquidity crisis” point: the right shoulder joint where the Internal Energy flow was blocked. He targeted it with perfect precision.
“Devaluation!”
With his amplified Internal Energy and the Golden Heart Eye’s function, Baek Unhuei barely slipped past the punch, his palm grazing lightly across Jo Cheol’s right shoulder.
In that moment, Jo Cheol’s vaunted tidal wave of Internal Energy drained away as if a bank run had been triggered.

[Skill Hit: Initiating forced liquidation of target’s Internal Energy!]
[Effect: Attack power plummets 90%. Temporary ‘fund freeze (paralysis)’ induced in enemy’s Dantian.]

“What—? My Internal Energy…!”
Jo Cheol staggered backward, his voice cracking with confusion.
For all his hundreds of battles throughout a lifetime, he’d never experienced this bizarre sensation—as if his own strength were evaporating into thin air.
Baek Unhuei seized that fraction of vulnerability. The jade fragments—worth ten taels, his last reserve—he flicked them with perfect accuracy toward the most grievously tangled “impaired asset” point in Jo Cheol’s meridian system.

[Thousand Gold Strike – Consecutive Strike]
[Impact Successful: Targeting the most defective point in enemy’s fund (meridian) circulation to induce cascading default.]

Crack—!
His Internal Energy surged backward, and Jo Cheol’s massive frame crashed to the ground. The stronger one’s martial power, the more devastating the backlash when the energy reversed course.
At the sight of the tyrannical gang leader spewing blood and collapsing in an instant, Heuksabang’s thugs scattered in panic, fleeing in all directions.

The courtyard fell silent, filled only with the cool night breeze. Baek Unhuei slumped to the ground, heaving for breath. Cold sweat poured from his spine like rain.
Had Jo Cheol not grown careless, had he mounted a proper defense, the technique would never have landed—not before Baek Unhuei’s bones were ground to powder.
That was when, before Baek Unhuei could even catch his breath, the cool blade of Baek Yeonhwa’s sword pressed against his throat.
“Who are you?”
Baek Yeonhwa’s voice carried less anger than a chill of suspicion. This was her brother—a man she’d watched over his entire life, standing right beside him. Even when others pointed fingers, she alone had always believed that one day Baek Unhuei would come to his senses and prove himself worthy. But this time, she could not accept it.
His behavior in the marketplace this afternoon had been strange enough, but watching someone whose only training was basic Body Protection Technique subdue Jo Cheol—a first-rate master—in a single breath was beyond any logic she knew.
Baek Yeonhwa’s sword point pressed keenly against Baek Unhuei’s throat. It was the martial artist’s characteristic threat: reveal your true identity, or be cut down.
In truth, Baek Unhuei’s current state was utterly hollow. He had purchased Jo Cheol’s debt of a thousand silver taels and converted it into Internal Energy to fight, but the moment he subdued Jo Cheol and completed the Offset Settlement, that right had been extinguished.
As his net worth fell to zero, his power drained away like a retreating tide. Now his entire body was so depleted he could barely twitch a finger.
Though the cold metal touching his throat tried to shake him, Baek Unhuei clung to his composure.
The seasoned nerve of Kang Taeseok—who in his past life had sat across negotiating tables from countless corporate hunters without flinching at even the most poisonous clauses they offered—was what held him steady now.
“It’s me, sister. You’re breaking my heart.”
Baek Unhuei deliberately went slack in the legs and answered with disarming cheerfulness.
“When you were ten, remember? You stole a wooden sword from the storage shed and we practiced swordplay together until Father caught us. You thought I’d been the one causing trouble, so you didn’t say a word to defend me. I got beaten so hard my shins split open and I cried all day from the sting. But that night, you felt so sorry you snuck out and brought me a huge pile of those sweetmeats I loved so much. Have you forgotten?”
Baek Yeonhwa’s eyes trembled. That memory belonged only to the two of them—a childhood fragment buried in the backyard of the Baekun Trading Company.
“How could you possibly know that? Is it… is it really my brother Unhuei?”
“I died and came back, so my mind must have opened up a bit. I thought my runaway older brother had taken the family’s secret manual. Turns out he didn’t. Nobody understood the true value of this iron tablet.”
Baek Unhuei drew from his robes a worn iron tablet—the Thousand Gold Horse Scripture Tablet—and showed it. Baek Yeonhwa still suspicious, looked back and forth between the tablet and her brother’s face.
“But what about that power that just laid Jo Cheol flat? You never trained in Internal Energy. Did you somehow learn some forbidden technique from a heterodox sect?”
“The moment I touched the manual, some strange art flooded into my head. I can barely explain it myself, but it’s less a martial technique and more like… a kind of Qimen Dunjia or shadow technique. It reads the flow of an opponent’s Chi Meridians as if they were capital flows, then severs the vital points.”
Baek Unhuei hid the true nature of the Daechen Capital Arts as much as he could. If word spread that he could convert capital value into martial power, the martial artists of the realm would never leave him alone.
Baek Yeonhwa’s expression remained doubtful, but when she checked her brother’s meridians, she soon lowered her sword.
“Your Dantian is empty. So it really is some kind of sorcery or shadow technique? It’s hard to believe. That Jo Cheol, a true master, fell to such a method…”
“He let his guard down. Looked down on a merchant, that’s all. Don’t worry now. I’ve recovered the family’s secrets, and though I’ve caused nothing but trouble until now, I’ll take responsibility for the company and the family from this point forward.”
It was not mere flattery.
Kang Taeyun had begun to accept not only Baek Unhuei’s memories as his own, but his emotions as well, naturally and without resistance. It could be said that their souls had become intertwined.

Squeak—
At that moment, a heavy carriage slid through the gates of the Baekun Trading Company’s weathered entrance. It was utterly unlike the carriage of Hae Yaksim, the Luoyang branch director they’d seen earlier—this was overwhelming in its splendor.
The wheel spokes gleamed as though molten silver had been poured into them, and the carriage moved without sound. On its doors, the characters “Geumsin” blazed with golden brilliance.
Baek Yeonhwa instinctively stepped in front of her brother and gripped her sword hilt tight.
“Who is it this time?”
The carriage door opened, and a woman stepped out.
Her jet-black hair was pinned up with silver hairpins, and she wore a deep violet silk robe the color of a night sky. Her white skin, kissed by moonlight, was as smooth as the finest jade, yet her eyes were as cold as eternal snow.
She was Seo Harin, the eldest daughter of the Geumsin Jundang—the organization said to wield the financial power of the realm from the shadows—and the director of its Luoyang branch.
Even Director Hae Yaksim had to bow his head before her, making her the true mistress of Luoyang’s financial world.

Seo Harin’s arrival changed even the air around her. Her luminous red robes shone softly in the moonlight, and the golden thread embroidery that flowed across them testified to her authority. Yet her cool eyes held the gaze of a hunter—untouched by emotion, pursuing only numbers and results.
“How strange. This place should reek of decay, and yet there’s an unexpected fragrance mixed in.”
Seo Harin ignored Baek Yeonhwa’s sharp vigilance and approached Baek Unhuei. With each step she took, a scent thicker than agarwood perfume—smooth and suggestive of gold itself—filled the air.
Baek Unhuei instinctively activated his Golden Heart Eye to assess her information.
‘What is this? Suddenly barging into someone’s home… She’s no ordinary uninvited guest. I need to gauge the extent of this woman’s assets.’
Hum—!
The instant golden light began to gather in Baek Unhuei’s eyes, a sharp pain shot through his skull and rejection bloomed in his mind.
‘Urgh!’

[Warning: Insufficient Capital]

Mergers and Acquisitions of the Martial Realm with Money Episode 3

Author
Song Zzubol
Publisher
Daon Creative
Planning / Editing / Production
Yoon Taeri
Cover Design
Sik

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260907057.0003

ⓒ2026, Song Jjwonbol

※ This e-book is a work protected by the copyright law of the Republic of Korea.
No part or all of this work may be reprocessed in any form without permission from 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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