As for whether Orochimaru was still alive, the village's higher-ups believed he was.
Only one Sword of Ninja Love had been left at the scene, unrecovered. That meant the Fourth Hokage had taken all the others.
If the battle had been a one-sided rout, the Fourth Hokage wouldn't have had the chance to collect the remaining Swords of Ninja Love.
Besides, the Second and the Fourth were not only Impure World Bodies with immortal bodies, but also masters of the Flying Thunder God Technique. If they were determined to flee, there was no one in the Shinobi World who could stop them. So that corpse was most likely the remnant of some Forbidden Jutsu or secret technique.
Tsunade made the call. "Shizune, notify ANBU. Find Orochimaru as quickly as possible, at any cost!"
"Yes!"
Shizune answered and hurried off to pass on the order.
Before long, groups of Konoha Ninja split into teams of four and swiftly left the village, scattering in every direction.
Since this wasn't an operation to capture Orochimaru, the Konoha Ninja didn't just search for him themselves. They also asked other villages for help and even made use of the black markets in various countries, mobilizing nearly every resource available.
The higher-ups had also concluded that Orochimaru had already clashed with the Akatsuki Organization. To make the search more effective, they didn't keep it strictly confidential. Within days, the whole Shinobi World was abuzz with the news. Everyone knew that Konoha was searching for Orochimaru.
All sorts of rumors began circulating in the black markets. One even claimed that the Fourth Hokage had been brought back with Impure World Reincarnation by Orochimaru, and that the half of the Nine-Tails sealed inside him had reappeared in the Shinobi World.
Without a doubt,
many of these rumors, true