Ghost Billionaire-Chapter 57: Another World

She crossed her arms. "I meant: never tell anyone what your ability is."

"So it’s not about the spirit stone?" Matthew asked. She was talking about the stones, so he thought the rule was about it.

"No. The stone is just your fuel. But the rule—the one rule all Nexians follow—is this: never tell anyone what your ability is."

Matthew tilted his head slightly but didn’t speak. He waited.

"Every Nexian has a core," she explained. "We call it the Nexus Core. It’s like your spiritual engine. It’s unique to you. Your ability, your affinity, everything branches from it. That includes your class—Binder, Conduit, whatever. But the thing is, once someone knows what kind of core you have... they can target it."

She floated downward, stopping just in front of him. "Some Nexians, especially advanced ones, can extract energy straight from another person’s core as long as it’s compatible with theirs. They use it. Drain it. Hijack it. Sometimes it’s just temporary. Other times... it’s permanent."

Matthew stared at her.

"There’s a black market for cores," she continued. "Some people don’t just harvest spirit stones. They harvest Nexians. That’s why you don’t share your abilities or secrets. Not even with your allies. Because if someone figures out what your core does, it’s like handing them the blueprint to dismantle you."

He said nothing.

Instead, he stared at the stone in his hand again. Its glow pulsed faintly, the same as it had since he touched it. His fingers closed around it slowly, not to protect it, but to ground himself.

It wasn’t just about spirit stones. Or being able to see ghosts. That was surface-level stuff.

There were people out there strong enough to rip out your core. Weaponize it. Sell it. Use it.

And here he was, someone who’d lived a whole lifetime doing real estate deals, sipping wine on his yacht, arguing about stock percentages and profit margins. He used to think lawsuits were dangerous. That losing a contract would ruin him.

In his past life, before uncovering Catherine’s betrayal on his deathbed, his biggest concern had been dodging taxes and his deteriorating health due to his life choices.

Now?

Now he was sitting in a room with a floating ghost samurai girl, holding a glowing rock in one hand, and learning that his body was considered a potential energy source for underground Nexian traffickers.

"So someone can absorb someone’s cores only if they are compatible? What if they accidentally absorb someone who’s not compatible with their own core?" he couldn’t help but ask.

"They become tainted. Lose their sanity."

The ghost girl’s eyes darkened, the soft glow around her flickering like a candle in a windstorm.

"They lose themselves," she said, voice dropping lower. "Absorbing an incompatible core doesn’t just hurt, it rewrites you from the inside out. Spirit fractures. Mind splinters. Your body tries to mold itself into something it was never meant to be."

She drifted slowly to the side, her gaze locked on the spirit stone in Matthew’s hand.

"It starts small," she continued. "Nightmares that don’t end when you wake up. Nausea. Bone pain. Voices whispering things you’ve never heard, in languages you don’t know. Then your energy starts fluctuating—burning too hot, freezing cold the next second. People lose their ability to regulate it. They burn out. Or worse..."

Her eyes found his again.

"They mutate."

Matthew’s brow twitched. "Mutate?"

She nodded. "Spirit distortion. Your Nexus Core twists. Instead of drawing in energy, it leaks. You start draining everything, spirit stones, other Nexians, even normal people around you. Just by standing near them."

She turned slightly, her form flickering for half a second, as if even the memory of it unnerved her.

"Eventually, you stop being human. Some become Wraithborn—hollow shells that hunger for cores. Others... don’t even get that far. They collapse into themselves. A black hole of raw spirit energy. And when they explode?"

She lifted a finger and snapped.

"Boom. One explosion took out a whole city block in Shanghai last year. Nothing left but glass and ash."

Matthew felt the spirit stone pulse once more in his palm, heavier now. Not in weight—but in implication.

"You have one core," she said, her voice sharp now. "One affinity. One path. Stray from it—and the backlash won’t just kill you. It’ll erase you."

She leaned in, inches from his face. "So next time someone offers to ’share power’ or ’combine skills,’ you remember this, some deals don’t come with refunds. Only fallout."

He lowered his gaze. The shift in perspective hit hard.

All that time in his past life, building his empire, he hadn’t even known there was another world just beneath his feet. A world where people killed for spirit stones, spiraled into insanity, and lived in constant fear of each other’s secrets.

"This is insane," he muttered.

"No," the ghost girl said. "This is real. You just never saw it before."

Matthew didn’t answer.

He looked down at the backpack. Inside it, another world. A space that wasn’t supposed to exist. And a secret about himself that he couldn’t afford to tell anyone.

Ever.

And he hadn’t even finished his exams yet.

He let out a sigh.

"Now, let’s start. I will teach you the basics. That’s all you need to know for now."

Matthew looked at the girl again. "Alright."

Instead of saying another word, the ghost girl raised her hand and revealed a small object hovering just above her palm.

It looked like a marble, smooth, faintly glowing, almost translucent. But as it floated in place, it pulsed softly, like it was alive.

"This is the most efficient way for a Nexian to pass down basic knowledge or technique," she said. "Everything I’ve learned since childhood is inside this. My father gave it to me, and his father gave it to him before that."

Matthew stared at it, then at her. His brow creased.

"Now, I will give it to you," she added.

"So... if I take that," Matthew said slowly, eyeing the glowing marble. "Wouldn’t that make me your son?"

The girl blinked, visibly thrown. "You—what? No! Why would—" She huffed, already retracting her hand. "Fine, if you don’t want it, I’ll just—"

"What if it’s some weird control trick?" Matthew cut in. "What if taking it makes me your spiritual slave or whatever?" Surely, she couldn’t actually blame him for thinking that way, right?

She froze, then glared at him. "You really think I’d go through all this trouble just to enslave someone like you? Aren’t you too paranoid? What? Did someone betray you in the past?"

He raised an eyebrow in response. This woman just told him not to trust someone and then was ranting about him being paranoid? For some reason, he found this woman very confusing.

"If spirit essence could control people," she went on, still holding out the marble. "Don’t you think we’d be ruling over humans by now instead of hiding in basements and forests like fugitives?"

Matthew didn’t answer. He just stared at the marble like it might sprout legs and start dancing.

This ghost would never be able to convince him that some Nexians couldn’t control the mind. No. He’d watched too many fantasy movies and read too many books to be easily fooled.

"Seriously," she added. "You’re not that special. You’re just the guy I’m stuck with."

Matthew exhaled and muttered under his breath, "That makes two of us."