Late at night, in Sunagakure.
The desert's nights and days differed drastically in temperature.
Howling, icy winds swept up sand and gravel, blowing through the silent buildings and streets in the canyon.
Guy concealed himself as he moved through the darkness. With the blowing sand and shadows as cover, no one spotted him.
He swiftly approached a relatively isolated building inside the village.
According to the intelligence he had gathered during his covert investigations, Gaara and Hoichi were most likely here.
He looked at the building ahead, which seemed particularly quiet in the darkness, even a little desolate.
Guy's expression grew grave.
Several pieces of intelligence he had gathered pointed toward some troubling conclusions.
First, Karura was dead.
Karura was Gaara's mother.
In the original storyline, she had indeed died from "complications during childbirth."
But that had happened because Rasa wanted to create the perfect weapon of war and sealed Shukaku inside Gaara before he was born.
Shukaku's power was violent and chilling.
Those circumstances were what had caused Karura's difficult labor.
But now that Shukaku was inside Pakura, why had Karura still suffered complications?
Guy sensed something was wrong.
This had not been Karura's first delivery.
She had already given birth to two children, Kankurō and Temari.
How could a woman who had already borne two children, and should have been reasonably healthy, so easily die from "complications during childbirth"?
Besides, she was the wife of Fourth Kazekage Rasa. She should have had access to the best medical care.
What this suggested was very likely more than a simple "accident."
Even more unreasonable was what had happened after Gaara's birth.
Hoichi should have been implicated or sidelined because his master had transferred the Tailed Beast without authorization.
Yet he had become Gaara's personal bodyguard?
These two had barely interacted