Whether it was Hyuga Kagami's team from earlier or the Akatsuki members who arrived later, neither side lingered on the battlefield for long before swiftly withdrawing.
The former left because the destruction of the "Type-Three Biological Armor" had left Gaara's spirit body in an extremely weakened state, requiring him to immediately return to his body to recuperate. The latter feared the God Organization and the Five Great Shinobi Villages' follow-up encirclement forces.
Of course, there were no encirclement forces at all.
More than an hour after both sides had withdrawn, a Chunin patrol team responsible for scouting the outskirts of Konoha happened upon the devastated battlefield.
Gazing at the terrifying battlefield, crisscrossed with ravines and stretching for more than ten miles, one of the Chunin on patrol stared in shock. "Th-this... what happened here?!"
The equally stunned captain urged, "Quick! Notify the village! Suspicious individuals fought here!"
Very soon, the patrol team member responsible for communications used a summoned ninja beast through the Summoning Technique to relay the situation back to the village.
While they waited for the village to send investigators, one of the patrol members asked, "Captain, who do you think fought here?"
The captain shook his head. "I don't know either. But on such a massive battlefield, we haven't found a single corpse, severed limb, or fragment of remains. There isn't even much smell of blood in the air. So it probably wasn't two ninja armies fighting. It was likely caused by a small number of top-tier experts clashing."
The team members all looked grave. "To cause this much destruction... what kind of experts were they?"
Inside Konoha.
"Damn it, he got away!"
Sasuke walked out of the guesthouse with his hands in his pockets, his face dark.
He had always harbored a grudge over losing