He-El lowered his thoughts to the level of an ordinary person and reached into the Naruto universe, intending to directly replace his stand-in, only to discover something was very wrong.
His consciousness was hazy, as though he were still in a womb. He did not know himself and had no way to awaken.
The stand-in consciousness in the Naruto universe had already died once in the One Piece universe. Seeing its deep resentment and unwillingness, He-El had sent it into another universe—the Naruto universe.
There had originally been no issue, but Lucy's recent observations had yielded no feedback from the Naruto universe. Suspecting something had gone wrong, she reported it to He-El.
The moment He-El's consciousness entered, he knew this was bad.
Hazy and muddled, as though submerged in chaos.
This was not like when he had still been an infant, but rather that he had yet to awaken to the fact that he was Chen Hai.
When He-El sent this stand-in into the Naruto universe, he had not created a body for it. He had merely cast its consciousness and memories directly into the Naruto universe.
That meant the stand-in needed to awaken within the Naruto universe before it could recall its experiences and memories from the One Piece universe, before it could remember its experiences as Chen Hai.
The problem was that it had not awakened!
It had simply become a native of the Naruto universe, without awakening its past life.
"What's going on?"
He-El found it strange.
Even if the stand-in's consciousness and memories had entered the Naruto universe and been placed into a fetus, as the fetus was born and grew, and the infant's brain rapidly developed and matured, there was no reason it should have been unable to awaken its past life.
"Is something preventing