The golden flames in Di Jun's eyes flickered.
"It's simple."
With his hands behind his back, Di Jun said evenly, "Because back then, without this disguise, you would have long since been crushed by this world."
Yoriichi parted his lips.
He did not interrupt, but quietly waited for him to continue.
"When your soul first crossed dimensions and descended into this world, it immediately triggered rejection from this realm's underlying laws."
Di Jun raised his head, his gaze sweeping across the dome of the Soul King Palace. "The so-called will of the world instinctively detected the intrusion of a power that did not belong to this dimension and immediately began trying to purge you on every front."
"At the time, you had suffered immense depletion while crossing the barrier. Your soul was so weak that you had no way of resisting a reckoning of that magnitude."
A trace of world-disdaining pride flashed through Di Jun's eyes. "Had you not been in your most broken state, how could the laws of a mere lower plane have been worthy of expelling you?"
"So you found me a shell?"
Di Jun looked at the young man before him and nodded slightly. "It was your only way to survive."
Di Jun paused briefly, then continued.
"Under such desperate circumstances, this wisp of my will was severely restricted."
"I could only release a faint strand of divine sense to search the edges of this world."
He turned his gaze toward Yoriichi. "Fortunately, in a remote corner at the edge of this realm, there happened to be a departed soul drifting about that shared this world's origin."
Yoriichi raised an eyebrow. "Shared its origin?"
"It came from the same Great Thousand World."
Di Jun paced slowly through the void. "It was the pure soul of a