The Lord of Coins

The entire plot of this manhwa centres around a book that allows the protagonist to trade on an inter-dimensional market. In his past life the possession of such a book provided limitless opportunities, but also created a huge vulnerability for him too. Tortured and on the brink of death, he age regresses back to his mid-teens, only to find he can access the book remotely after his left eye begins glowing and text appears in the air that is only visible to him. This eradicates the vulnerability of him losing ownership of the book and makes it less likely his ownership, or the ability, of the book could be discovered.

With the premise of the story described, the ones who are enticed into reading this should first know; there are some glaring negatives that make this manhwa very underwhelming to anyone who begins reading with any sort of expectation, as it somehow manages to annihilate every single key aspect or theme that could have made it interesting.

To begin with, for a manhwa with the primary theme of political manoeuvring, it completely lacks subtlety in plot, dialogue and expressions. Lies and schemes are transparent, and political rivals show no restraint when sharing their emotions or opinions. “Easter eggs” of future plot points are incredibly blunt and lazy. Instead of using vague words with deeper meaning that give the reader an “Aha, so that’s what that line meant!” moment when later revealed, the author creates Easter eggs through terse lines from the protagonist like, “there’s still ‘that thing’ that I have to do.” or “I still need to be wary of ‘them’” or simply whispering into another character’s ear and not disclosing the contents to the reader. This terseness is amplified by the manhwa being written in the first person, as it’s contradictory when the character that provides perspective to the reader keeps random perspectives secret.

The secondary theme of financial trading is made completely redundant by the protagonist’s ability to print money due to overpowered VIP perks. Of the multitude of perks he has, it’s really the combination of three specifically unreasonable perks. Those being; a 15% cash back on purchases, a 10% discount on purchases, and a zero commission fee or tax. This essentially allows the protagonist to turn a profit by buying and reselling any items for more than 76.5% of the original buying price. He also has another perk that lets him see the market price of all goods, so it’s also impossible to get ripped off when buying goods. Hence; “print money”. Hence; there is no actual skill required to make money.

The tertiary theme of physical growth holds very little substance as the protagonist can purchase Xantian and Houtian techniques from martial worlds through the inter-dimensional exchange market, in which, as stated previously, he has essentially unlimited money.

The final point is not a criticism of a wasted theme, but the horrible writing of one of the protagonist’s personality traits, that, when done poorly, happens to create extreme frustration to a reader. This personality trait is the protagonist’s supposed intelligence. This trait is incredibly inconsistent, mainly due to the author making the protagonist ignorant to plot problems that the audience can effortlessly solve.

For example, when the protagonist stumbles across his VIP perks one by one, he’s completely dumbfounded. Whereas the readers reaction is immediately, “Oh, MC’s got VIP perks.” Also, when searching the family storage in the original place he found the book, he is, again, dumbfounded. Meanwhile, the reader’s thoughts: “Dude, you ain’t finding the book. It’s in your eye.” MC then explains all the possible logical reasons. The book simply not existing anymore because it migrated to his eye is not one of the logical reasons thought up, since that thought is way too illogical. As if definition of “logical” didn’t change after transmigrating though time and space.

The drawings in the manhwa aren’t incoherent and the timing isn’t poorly paced. The translation itself is okay. There’s no consistent errors in grammar or quality. The main issue likely lies in the fault of the previous source material. Though I cannot judge what I haven’t read.