Orochimaru was dead. At least, that was how it looked to Sarutobi.
He had never imagined that his wayward student's ability to stay alive was strong enough to survive Hashirama going all out, either.
He thought for a moment, tapped his fingers lightly against the desk, then took out an envelope and began writing.
The recipient of this letter was Jiraiya.
About half an hour later, Sarutobi looked at the letter he had written and smiled bitterly. I wonder if Jiraiya will think I'm lying to him when he reads this.
After much thought, he erased the part about Orochimaru's death, stating only that Orochimaru had appeared in the village and asking him to return immediately.
The days passed like that. Aside from the food being a little worse, daily life in the Forest of Death was much the same as outside.
Because of the changes to the terrain caused by the battle with Orochimaru a few days earlier, quite a few teams came over to investigate what had happened. After seeing the shattered ground and the wildly growing trees, they all silently turned around and left.
Two teams even exchanged glances and, after a brief silence, reached an understanding and quietly slipped away together.
Good grief, what kind of team did Konoha send in? Was this really something humans could do?!
It was just absurd. The real problem was that crows came every day to tell them where Naruto's team was.
Heh, do you think we can't see that devastated stretch of land?
Still, with the crows' daily reminders, the other teams did not have to worry about Naruto's team coming out to cause trouble for them.
Listening every day to reports of Naruto's team peacefully staying put made them feel a little more at peace themselves.
Really, they