To find out whether he could awaken the Rinnegan, he first had to obtain Sage Eyes.
Then he would combine Yin and Yang Release and see whether he could awaken the Rinnegan.
The second way to grow stronger was to obtain chakra from every tailed beast, awaken the Ten-Tails, and become the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki.
That meant he would have to capture the tailed beasts.
In that case, he could work with the Akatsuki.
There was actually another option: learning senjutsu.
He could add Sage Mode to his Sage Body.
With the Chunin Ninja Exams underway, Jiraiya would be returning to the village soon. He would see whether there was a chance to sign a contract with Mount Myōboku.
If that failed, he would find Orochimaru and go to Ryūchi Cave.
He would learn Ryūchi Cave's Sage Mode.
Ryūchi Cave's Sage Mode was extremely powerful, too.
In two days, Orochimaru would launch his Konoha Crush Plan.
Konoha would be thrown into chaos.
Zhou Cheng planned to take advantage of the chaos to look through the Scroll of Seals again and learn every forbidden technique it contained.
Especially Impure World Reincarnation, which would be a formidable weapon in the Fourth Shinobi World War.
Zhou Cheng did not care whether the Third Generation lived or died. It was not because he felt no gratitude for the man's teachings.
Rather, the Third Generation had truly become an obstacle to Konoha's continued development.
His power struggles with Danzo and the advisors had already disrupted Konoha's normal development.
Too many promising shinobi had died in internal strife rather than on the battlefield.
Besides, the Third Generation was far too conciliatory.
Conciliation was not a bad thing, but taken too far, it became capitulation.
Endless capitulation!
The tree that was Konoha had rotted to its core. The