Acquiring the Murim with Money - Chapter 37

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

Chapter 37. The Turning Gears.

The Changhae Escort Agency’s dock looked nothing like it had two months before.
The tilted signboard had been replaced with a new one. Broken carts had been cleared away, the warehouse was bursting with goods, and the escort agents’ faces had transformed. Shoulders that had sagged now stood straight, and through nightly training, their confidence had risen sharply in step with their growing skill.
Jin Mu-yeon’s face had brightened so noticeably that one might have wondered if this was truly his nature all along—and now he moved with such composure that he tended personally to each new trainee.
As the escort house grew busier, its scale expanded rapidly. The roster of agents, workers, and apprentices swelled, and the agency thrummed with vitality and purpose.
And in the weeks since the critical operation at Namyang Riverside, invisible gears of immense size had begun to mesh and turn across all of Namyang.
The movement that rippled through Namyang did not begin with any grand proclamation.
It began with each person doing what they could, where they stood.
Old Ro of the Namyang Ironworks moved first.
As the Mook Ryong Clan expanded, they received shipments of chain, hooks, arrowheads, and other consumables monthly from the Namyang Ironworks—though “shipments” was generous; they were practically bleeding the old man dry at cost.
Then Ro stopped the deliveries abruptly. The reason was simple: he had fallen ill. Of course, given the ironworks’ size, the excuse that one old man’s illness would halt production rang hollow. So a representative from the Mook Ryong Clan came calling.
“Why cut off supplies just because one old man’s under the weather? There are plenty of others here to keep things running!”
“This ironworks is what the master has built over a lifetime. Without his direct hand, nothing functions properly. And because of your demands, we’ve been running at a loss—we’ve no materials left to speak of.”
“Make it happen by next week, somehow!”
“If the master doesn’t wake, it won’t be possible.”
The Mook Ryong thugs blustered and left. That night, Ro sent a note to the Changhae Escort Agency.

[Supplies and equipment will be delayed. You should be able to hold for another week or so.]

So-ryang read the note aloud.
“Impressive. The old man’s bold. Not someone to take lightly.”
Baek Un-hui nodded.
“Right. He’s trustworthy. So-ryang, put in a special order for him immediately—use the Byeok Family’s private messenger service and keep it strictly confidential. It’s crucial.”

The silk merchant Yu moved differently.
There was an inn that the Mook Ryong thugs frequented. Its proprietor, Choi, had been one of Yu’s long-standing business partners. Yu made a subtle request.
“Could you listen in on what those guests say when they’re drinking?”
“What for?”
“Might prove useful later.”
Four days on, Choi passed a note to Yu.

[Someone came down from the Mook Ryong headquarters. Heard him let slip while drinking—said they’d finish it all this week.]

Baek Un-hui received the note.
‘This week.’
Byeok So-yeon had been keeping watch around the Mook Ryong territory through Cheong-pung, but hadn’t yet pinned down the exact timing. Now a single line of tavern talk filled that gap.

The dried fish merchant Heo became the liaison between the riverbank fishermen.
Every morning, Heo made the rounds along the water, asking the fishermen.
“Seen any Mook Ryong boats?”
“Two at the North Sosa Ferry at dawn.”
“What time?”
“Just after the Yin hour.”
Heo gathered these reports and brought them to the Changhae Escort Agency each evening.
Byeok So-yeon laid the intelligence from the Byeok Family’s fighters alongside Heo’s notes and spoke.
“It aligns with what Cheong-pung is seeing. There’s a pattern.”
“A pattern?”
“It means we can predict it.”

The new wind blowing through Namyang spread from the Changhae Escort Agency outward, touching the whole region.
Boatman’s Village, north of the riverside.
For generations, families of boatmen had lived here together. But over the past two years, the Mook Ryong Clan had harassed them relentlessly, confiscating their boats one by one on various pretexts.
Now only three households in the village still owned boats outright.
Among them, Boatman Jeong had spent his whole life piloting ferries in these waters, and he knew every subtle current, every tiny tributary by heart.
Since the Changhae Escort Agency had begun confronting the Mook Ryong Clan directly, he had sent word every day.

[Southern waterway running swift today. Mind the rapids ahead of Ma Ferry—dangerous. Western side route passable. Water shallow—flat-bottomed boats use caution.]

The Changhae Escort Agency agents departed with the note, their boats pushing out from the dock.
The moment Cheong-pung spotted the Mook Ryong Clan’s fast boat, he signaled. Then they slipped into the shortcut waterways that the Jeong merchant had revealed.
While the fast boat hesitated or floundered, unsure of the water’s depth, the Changhae Escort Agency vessels had already reached the ferry landing.
And thanks to the Changhae Escort Agency, the merchants who could breathe freely again—their families, the innkeepers and shopkeepers who worked where they frequented, and all the people of Namyang who had lived in silence under the Mook Ryong Clan’s tyranny—
Every last one of them rallied behind the Changhae Escort Agency with a single heart, and among those who had held their breath, an atmosphere of deliberate avoidance of the Mook Ryong Clan and Baekgeum Money Lender began to spread.

At that very moment, the real-time intelligence Byeok Hyeong-geom had sent arrived at Baek Un-hui through Byeok So-yeon.
“The proprietor of the Baekgeum Money Lender has urgently contacted the water route bandits.”
“Then time is running short.”
“Yes.”
Baek Un-hui unfolded a map as he spoke.
“So-ryang, organize everything we’ve gathered so far.”
So-ryang picked up a sheet of paper.
“First, the Baekgeum Money Lender.”
So-ryang laid the paper on the table.
“It’s an old Namyang institution—been operating for over twenty years. But recently its operations have completely changed. Before, it was just an ordinary money lender, but lately their debt collection methods have become far too aggressive and systematic.”
“Did the proprietor change?”
“No, he’s the same. But the money flow over the past year has been strange.”
Baek Un-hui picked up the documents So-ryang had compiled and activated his Golden Divine Eye.
He traced the flow of funds—money moving between the Baekgeum Money Lender and the Mook Ryong Clan, and its source.
The trail narrowed and narrowed. Then it stopped.

[Analysis limit reached. Fund source untraceable.]

Baek Un-hui set down the paper.
It felt like when he’d tracked the Blood Cult’s money flow in Luoyang.
In other words, the traces had been deliberately erased.
“So-ryang.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the proprietor of the Mook Ryong Clan?”
“There’s little information. Someone named Chu took over a year ago. The previous proprietor seems to have been killed by him. And around that same time, Jin Cheol-san, the Changhae Escort Agency’s former proprietor, was suddenly assassinated in a mysterious attack.”
The room fell silent.
“And when the Baekgeum Money Lender began aggressively expanding its scale here in Namyang—”
So-ryang worked the abacus.
“It matches. Thirteen months ago.”
“So it’s all connected, then?”
“Yes. To summarize: they move in organic coordination with each other; the current Mook Ryong Clan is facing supply difficulties; we have intelligence that they’re moving within this week; we’ve secured information on northbound water routes and night flows, as well as shortcut waterway routes. And last—we can confirm there’s definitely some connection between them and the Namyang Prefecture.”
So-ryang set down his abacus as he spoke.
“We know all of it. They have no idea we know everything.”
Baek Un-hui gazed out the window.
“Combining what Cheong-pung’s gathered about the movements from the Mook Ryong Clan’s main headquarters—we’re right on the edge now.”
So-ryang spoke.
“Yes. As early as tonight. At the latest, within two days.”
The room fell silent.
So-ryang murmured as he looked at the pile of notes containing the organized intelligence.
“All this information came from people.”
“That’s right.”
“Not bought with silver.”
“That’s why it’s more trustworthy.”
“…At this point it’s not Changhae Escort Agency versus Mook Ryong Clan anymore. It’s nearly all of Namyang against the Mook Ryong Clan.”
Instead of answering, Baek Un-hui covered the map.

* * *

Around midnight that night.
The Changhae Escort Agency’s landing, blanketed in deep darkness.
Three fast boats, riding down a tributary of Namyang and cutting through the silence, slipped ghostlike into the landing. They were the Mook Ryong Clan’s advance raiding party.
“Move quietly. Pour oil on the Changhae Escort Agency cargo ship moored over there and set it ablaze. Use the chaos of the burning ship to raid the warehouse, then pull out immediately.”
Ro Gak, the deputy leader of the Mook Ryong Clan aboard the fast boat, lowered his voice as he issued orders. Some forty water bandits chuckled in the darkness and gathered torches and oil containers.
It was the moment when the water raiders threw ropes and began crawling up onto the deck of the cargo ship.
Shriek—!
The sharp cry of Cheong-pung, circling between the clouds, tore through the night sky.
“What—what was that sound!”
The water raiders climbing onto the Changhae Escort Agency’s cargo ship lifted their heads in alarm, and in that instant, the deck—silent as a tomb moments before—blazed with light.
“Oil containers, you say. Quite a dangerous cargo to be hauling through the night.”
Baek Un-hui stood at ease on the deck, hands clasped behind his back. Beside him, escort agents nocked arrows, and at the front, Gwak Dae-ho planted his nine-pointed halberd on the boards, his gaze sharp enough to kill as he stared down the raiders.
“It’s a trap! Fall back! Fall back!”
Ro Gak cried out urgently and lunged toward the fast boat, but the ropes connecting the cargo ship to the fast boats had already been severed by sword strikes in the darkness.
“I don’t recall giving anyone permission to retreat.”
Standing on the nearest fast boat’s deck was Ju Yak-gyeong in crimson martial robes, her blade radiating a chill. On the bow of the opposite fast boat, Hye-gwang—who had easily subdued one raider left aboard—stood with palms pressed together, his heavy staff resting across his shoulders.
“Amitabha Buddha. To board another’s vessel uninvited is theft; to set fires is a sin that binds one to the flames of hell. Today, this humble monk shall ease that karmic burden with merciful staff technique.”
“Don’t make me laugh, you bald fool! Today it’s Ami’s blade that punishes the wicked. Now that you’ve caught one, go watch from the back.”
The Mook Ryong Clan raiders, who had come to ambush only to find themselves in a net, exchanged panicked glances. Ro Gak called out calmly.
“There are only two of them on the fast boats. Abandon the oil—jump into the water! We reclaim the boats and flee!”
As the raiders cast off the oil containers and plunged into the river, arrows rained down upon them. The escort agents, led by Gwak Dae-ho, gritted their teeth and drew their bowstrings again and again, pouring every ounce of resentment and fury they had endured into each shot.
Ro Gak dove swiftly into the water and, staying submerged, clambered onto the fast boat moored farthest away. When he surfaced and looked around carefully, fewer than thirty raiders were attempting to board the nearer fast boats.
Most of the raiders, desperately fleeing the arrow barrage, tried to climb onto the nearest fast boat.
But waiting for them on that deck was Ju Yak-gyeong, her drawn blade shimmering with a cold blue light, her expression almost welcoming. Before her dancing sword, the raiders who struggled up onto the deck fell one after another without so much as a chance to resist.
Those who tried to avoid the demon-faced swordsman found no better fortune elsewhere.
On the second boat, a bald-headed man wielded a dark staff, golden energy flashing brilliantly as he moved. Upon closer inspection, his gentle smile never wavered even as he struck—exactly like someone playing whack-a-mole, clubbing every raider’s head the moment it appeared above the rail. He seemed to hold back his inner energy; no one died. But as the raiders, blood streaming from their skulls, nervously climbed back up again and again, only to have that compassionate smile meet them with another blow from the merciful staff, Ro Gak felt the hair on his entire body stand on end.
Hye-gwang, still using his merciful staff technique on the raiders’ skulls, spotted Ro Gak desperately rowing alone, trying to escape.
A deep golden radiance burst forth from his body, and the Reed Crossing the River—the supreme locomotive art of Shaolin, derived from the legend of Bodhidharma crossing the Yangtze River on a single reed—came into play.
And when Ro Gak saw the blood-stained staff wielder, now turned to gold, slicing through the water with his serene smile, he abandoned all will to resist and wrapped his head in his arms, crying out.
“I surrender! I surrender!”

Monetizing Martial Supremacy Chapter 37

Author
Song Bbombol
Publisher
Daon Creative
Planning / Editing / Production
Yun Tae-ri
Cover
Sik

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260907057.0037

ⓒ2026, Song Bbombol

※ This e-book is protected under the copyright law of the Republic of Korea.
No part or whole of this work may be modified or reprocessed in any form without the express permission of the author and publisher.

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