What is visible
At 15:31 in the official gameplay trailer, the closing montage shows the bearded Zhong Kui figure riding a tiger. This supports a frame-level observation about figure, animal, placement, and timestamp.
It does not establish whether the sequence is playable, cinematic, symbolic, a traversal system, or a transformation.
Why tigers invite comparison
Across Chinese visual culture, the tiger can carry associations of ferocity, mountain power, military force, and protection against harmful influences. These meanings vary by period, object, region, and companion imagery.
A tiger beside a protective figure therefore creates a meaningful comparison without proving direct quotation from one historical source.
Mount, companion, or emblem
Modern game language encourages viewers to classify an animal as a mount, summon, companion, boss, or ability. The released frame does not settle among those categories.
Cathay Codex uses mount only as a description of visible riding posture, not as a published feature name.
What would change the record
A developer description, interface label, extended playable sequence, or official systems explanation could move the claim from observed to official. Until then, the stable statement is simply that Zhong Kui and the tiger appear together.
Future revisions should preserve the original timestamp and add new evidence rather than retroactively pretending the first frame contained the complete answer.