Acquiring the Murim with Money - Chapter 8

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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 8. Dopai Crispy Confection

Baek Yeon-hwa barely managed to halt the tip of her blade before it reached Dang So-yu. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“Hui? You… are you all right?”
“Ah… don’t worry, sister. As you can see, I’m fine. But Doctor, wasn’t that a bit excessive? A merchant’s body is his capital!”
Baek Yun-hui staggered to his feet and shot a glare at Dang So-yu.
Dang So-yu paid no mind to Baek Yeon-hwa’s blade, his eyes wide as he assessed Baek Yun-hui’s condition. A man who could take his custom-blended Paralysis Poison head-on and recover from it in mere breaths, neutralizing it on his own—such a thing seemed impossible.
“Who… just who are you really? My Paralysis Needle is the kind of thing that pins down even first-rate masters for at least half a day. You’re telling me you digested that in such a short time?”
“My identity? I’m simply an honest merchant. Whatever enters my body, I calculate and settle it in my own way, that’s all.”
Dang So-yu stared blankly for a moment, then let out a low chuckle.
“Excellent. A constitution this unusual is truly rare. And the traces of Blood Heavenly Tide no less… I’ll dedicate myself to your treatment for the time being.”
‘Rare medicinal herbs are worth whatever price you ask for them. Right now the company has only expenses and no income. I need to stabilize the cash flow as quickly as possible.’

* * *

The next morning.
The marketplace in Luoyang was as chaotic as always.
The calls of fishmongers hawking their wares, the rumble of carts laden with tofu rolling over cobblestone, the rich aroma of sesame oil drifting from somewhere.
Walking through it all, Baek Yun-hui’s eyes quietly activated the Golden Divine Eye.
Immediately, each item on the stalls flooded his vision, each tagged with golden numerals.
‘Vegetables, grain, medicinal herbs, silk… all already monopolized by other merchants’ distribution networks. Going head-to-head with them here would be a waste of resources.’
It was as Baek Yun-hui had completed about half a circuit of the marketplace.
In one corner of the market, set apart from the other stalls, sat a merchant in unfamiliar garb, crouched among his wares. Short beard, coarse hair, weathered bronze skin darkened by desert winds. A Western Region Merchant.
At his feet lay two or three cloth-covered bundles stacked carelessly. Passersby glanced and moved on.
Baek Yun-hui stopped. The Golden Divine Eye responded.

[Item: Green Jade Fruit]
[Analysis: Origin—Western Regions high plateau. Distinctive aroma. High fat content, nutty profile. No comparable product on record.]
[Market Value: Cannot Be Determined]

‘… Cannot be determined?’
Baek Yun-hui’s eyes narrowed.
The absence of a ledger valuation meant one of two things: either the item was truly useless, or no one had yet discovered its real worth.
He slowly crouched before the merchant.
“What is this?”
The merchant curtly opened one of the bundles. It was filled with pale green nuts, each the size of two finger joints.
‘Green Jade Fruit? I’ve seen this look before somewhere.’
Baek Yun-hui picked one up and cracked it between his teeth.
Crunch.
The delicate shell shattered, and a nutty, sweet fragrance enveloped his tongue. A distinctive woody note and butter-soft fat spread across his palate.
‘This taste is…’
The merchant sighed and grumbled.
People in Luoyang all said the thing was hard to finish and an odd color, so no one would touch it. A major Western Regions trading company had come through Luoyang and offloaded the cargo at rock-bottom prices, and for half a month now it had just been sitting as dead weight.
Baek Yun-hui was silent for a moment.
A memory from his past life flashed through him like lightning.
‘Pistachio.’
The Middle Eastern dessert craze. Dubai chocolate. And those chewy Dubai cookies. News articles about opening-day lineups where even money couldn’t guarantee you’d get them.
That sweet madness that had spread wildly across Instagram.
Inside Baek Yun-hui’s head, an abacus began to roll at tremendous speed.
‘The hardened Black Sugar gathering dust in our warehouse… and those unsold flour stocks… if I combine those with this…’
The negotiation didn’t take long.
The merchant, sick of hauling the cargo, eagerly accepted whatever price was offered, and Baek Yun-hui swept up two full cartloads of the green nuts for a mere ten silver coins.

So-ryang came running with eyes wide, the moment the carts rolled into the company courtyard.
“Baek Yun-hui! What is all this? We’ve got expenses everywhere already, and you’re wasting money like this!”
“So-ryang.”
Baek Yun-hui picked up a shelled nut and popped it straight into So-ryang’s mouth.
“Mmph!”
His eyes widened slowly as he chewed thoughtfully.
“…This is actually quite good.”
“Isn’t it?”
Baek Yun-hui opened the pantry door with a sly smile.
“Pull out all that Black Sugar rotting in storage and the flour. In two days, we’re making the most expensive snack in Luoyang.”

* * *

From that night on, the lights in the Baek Yun Trading Company’s kitchen never went dark.
Sturdily-built workers from Cheongsu-chae hunched their shoulders and carefully worked the dough, and under Baek Yun-hui’s relentless demands, they led by Gwang-du—who possessed unexpectedly delicate hands—stretched the dough as thin as they could manage.
“Thinner! If it tears, start over. Keep going until it crumbles like silk when you put it in your mouth!”
“Ugh… Young Master! Pulling dough is so much harder than hauling cargo!”
Gwang-du worked the dough, sweat pouring down his face.
The thread-thin wheat dough fried in oil turned golden, scattering a savory aroma through the air.
The crispy shell was filled generously with finely ground green nut paste, then coated at the last moment with thickly melted Black Sugar that hardened into a solid mass.
So-ryang lifted the finished product and examined it with suspicion.
“…The outside looks like a black stone, but this is actually supposed to be eaten?”
“It’s like jade set within silk threads woven of gold. I’ve already decided on the name—’dwell,’ ‘flower-like splendor,’ ‘joy.’ Together it means ‘the lingering joy of flowers.'”
Baek Yun-hui brushed characters onto oil paper with a brush.

Dopai Crispy Confection

The moment So-ryang took a bite of the sample, his jaw clenched tight.
Crack!
The crispy surface shattered, releasing a burst of savory, sweet, and bitter notes all at once. The layered, dissolving texture was transcendent; the rich sweetness of the Black Sugar; the subtle, lingering flavor of the green nuts at the finish.
Without thinking, So-ryang’s hand reached toward a second piece.
Slap! Baek Yun-hui struck his hand away sharply.
“Not a chance. We’re selling these tomorrow.”
“…Let me at least taste half of one more. I think the flavor balance might be off.”
“We’re making exactly one hundred. Not a single more.”
So-ryang blinked in astonishment.
“One hundred? We have raw materials stacked in carts—more than two—and you’re only selling a hundred? We could easily make thousands!”
“Limited to exactly one hundred pieces per day.”
Baek Yun-hui smiled faintly, and So-ryang thumped his chest in frustration.
“Why not?! We have stock piling up—why won’t you sell it!”
“Do you think business works overnight? The most expensive thing in the world isn’t gold or jade.”
Baek Yun-hui’s eyes gleamed as he called over the children from the Cheon-i-mang intelligence network who had been waiting outside.
“The most expensive thing is ‘something you can’t buy even if you have the money.’ All right, children—time to turn this city upside down.”

* * *

Early the next morning.
A small wooden sign had been set up in front of the Baek Yun Trading Company’s main gate.

Dopai Crispy Confection
Golden pastry crafted by an Ancient Method from the Western Regions Dopai desert, passed down a thousand years.
Limited to one hundred pieces daily. Sales end when stock is sold out.

The evening before, Seo-seo and the small children of the Cheon-i-mang had circulated rumors quietly in tea houses, fabric merchants, and famous courtesans’ establishments frequented by noblewomen and the daughters of wealthy families.
‘A heavenly delicacy eaten only by the Western Regions imperial court. Already causing an enormous sensation among the great families of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Kaifeng—but so rare that it’s impossible to obtain, a phantom confection.’
A single sign announcing that this fabled snack had arrived in Luoyang.
The effect appeared before afternoon came.
“Tell me—is this really the Western Regions imperial pastry that the Hangzhou nobles eat?”
“I heard the crumbling golden threads are what gives it that texture? And there’s supposed to be real gold dust sprinkled on top!”
“One piece for a silver tael? Good heavens, that’s insane. But I can’t be the only one who doesn’t get to taste it!”
Servants sent by noblewomen sensitive to fashion and propriety, along with the children of the wealthy, began pouring in around the time the afternoon shift had just ended.
Rumor swelled like a rolling snowball at terrifying speed. The first customer brought the next, and when the whisper spread that stocks were running out, the crowd descended into frenzy.
All one hundred pieces of the one-silver-tael Dopai Crispy Confections were completely sold out in less than half a day.
Baek Yun-hui leaned against the veranda in the inner courtyard, gazing with satisfaction at the empty stall. So-ryang approached, clicking his abacus frantically.
“…The profit after covering raw materials and labor is astronomical. How many will you sell tomorrow?”
“Two hundred. But the price is now one tael and fifty cash.”
“What? You’re raising it by half a tael overnight?”
“People wanted to buy but couldn’t find any stock. So even if the price shoots up, they’ll buy anyway—in fact, the higher it gets, the more desperately they’ll want it.”

Baek Yun-hui’s marketing strategy had struck with terrifying precision.
By the second day, the Dopai Crispy Confection had become an absolute symbol of status among Luoyang’s upper classes. Despite the sharp price increase, the line in front of the Baek Yun Trading Company’s gates had tripled from the day before.
“Hey, stop pushing! I’ve been standing in line since the third watch!”
“Did your fiancée pressure you into coming too? If I don’t get these confections today, she’ll call off the engagement!”
Young men, harassed by threats from noble ladies or desperate to impress the women they fancied, stood trembling in the dawn chill, soaked with dew—an extraordinary sight indeed.
It reached the point where Cheongsu-chae had to mobilize all its workers just to manage the queue at the gate.
Baek Yun-hui seized the momentum.
He sent men to sweep up every remaining Green Jade Fruit from the Western Region Merchant, who was still camped not far from Luoyang. Then he ground the Green Jade Fruit into the dough and churned out batch after batch of Dopai Crispy Confections. Yet he maintained his limited-supply strategy with ruthless discipline.

[Notification: Massive cash flow has been generated!]
[Liquid assets surging! The corresponding value is being reflected in real time in the practitioner’s Inner Power portfolio.]

Whoooosh—!
With each flow of silver earned, heat rose from his dantian and surged cleanly through all his Qi Meridians. Little drops make a mighty ocean. The cash torrents of the past few days were expanding Baek Yun-hui’s Inner Power at a terrifying rate.

Five more days passed.
The line in front of the Baek Yun Trading Company had become a landmark of Luoyang.
People from nearby regions came deliberately after hearing the news. Having tasted the Dopai Crispy Confection became a kind of proof of status, and young nobles quarreled over who had bought the most.
And then.
What he’d anticipated happened.
Stalls selling confections of similar appearance began cropping up one after another in the markets outside Luoyang.
So-ryang entered the office with a grave expression.
“Baek Yun-hui. This is serious. The street vendors’ wares are still only roughly similar in appearance to ours, but now the big trading companies and inns in Luoyang have started moving to replicate our confections exactly. They must have figured out that the key ingredient is the Green Jade Fruit.”
Despite So-ryang’s concern, Baek Yun-hui leisurely picked up his teacup.
“Is that so? Then sell half of what we have left in the warehouse. Sell it all to them today. Five times—no, ten times—the original price we paid.”
“What?! Are you insane? You’re selling our core ingredient to the competition?”

Acquiring the Martial World with Money – Episode 8

Author
Song Jjeon-vol
Publisher
Daon Creative
Planning / Editing / Production
Yun Tae-ri
Cover
Design

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260907057.0008

ⓒ2026, Song Jjeon-vol

※ This e-book is protected under the Copyright Law of the Republic of Korea.
No part or whole of this work may be reproduced or adapted 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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