"Pfft..."
Feng Xi spat out a mouthful.
Wasn't that him? When had anything like that happened?
This system was even making up scenes for him.
Sakura Tohsaka: "It's the big brother..."
Tokiomi Tohsaka: "Sakura, was this the young man who saved you?"
Waver: "Could this person be..."
Feng Xi: "Yes, it's me."
Waver: "I knew it. I was already wondering whether you were from China. Your name was pretty obvious, after all."
Kayneth: "A mage from China? Interesting."
Because China's magecraft community was extremely exclusionary, the Mage's Association knew little about it.
All Kayneth knew was that China's magecraft community used Thought Magecraft, something completely different from the magecraft controlled by the Mage's Association, and that China had the Mountain Court, which rivaled the Wandering Sea.
[The door was suddenly kicked open, revealing a middle-aged man in pajamas.]
["Master!" Feng Xi looked panicked in the video.]
[The middle-aged man grabbed Feng Xi, spittle flying as he said, "You little brat! I was wondering what you were doing up in the middle of the night. Turns out you're messing around with this crooked nonsense again. Today's practice wasn't enough for you, was it?"]
["Fine! Your master will give you some extra practice today!"]
["Watch closely! Grasp the Sparrow's Tail! Cross Hands! Neck Deflect, Parry and Punch!!!"]
["Master, no! Aah!!!"]
Chapter 9: Who Was the Misleading Option?
(Kiritsugu Emiya)
["Remember to clean this up."]
[A while later, the middle-aged man clapped his hands and left, leaving behind a bruised and swollen Feng Xi.]
[The video ended here.]
Watching Feng Xi being used as a punching bag in the video completely upended everyone's worldview.
Feng Xi: "System, what the hell was that video? How could you slander an innocent man out of thin air!"
[This is to flesh out the host's identity. After all, everyone in the group is connected to the Fourth Holy Grail War, with the host as the sole exception. That could easily arouse suspicion.]
Feng Xi: "Uh, that's true."
The system really had thought things through. He had overlooked that.
After all, everyone in this group was shrewd.
If he were the only exception, they would easily notice something was off.
The others in the group had also recovered by now.
Waver: "Feng Xi, is that how your teacher normally treats you?"
Feng Xi: "Not my teacher. My master."
Feng Xi: "In China, a master for a day is a father for life. A master and a teacher are two different roles."
Rin Tohsaka: "Even so, he shouldn't hit you that hard."
Feng Xi: "Don't worry. It looks brutal, but it really isn't a big deal."
That was experience he had gained firsthand.
Although the system had fabricated the video, the incident had really happened.
Back then, because he admired Daoist Wang Ye, he had imitated him and dozed off while his master was practicing. Then...
Just like in the video, his master had used him as a punching bag to practice a set of Taijiquan.
His face had been bruised and swollen, but his movement hadn't been affected at all, so he couldn't even use the opportunity to slack off.
Waver: "You call that fine?!"
No matter how you looked at that face, "fine" wasn't the word for it.
Artoria: "He really is fine."
Artoria: "That gentleman's control over his strength is very precise. The injuries look severe, but they're only superficial."
Diarmuid: "He seems to be a master of unarmed combat."
Waver: "All right, the question is up."
Two rows of pictures appeared on the screen, one of humans and the other of Heroic Spirits.
There were eight humans: Kiritsugu Emiya, Tokiomi Tohsaka, Waver, Kayneth, Kariya Matou, Kirei Kotomine, Ryunosuke Uryu, and Feng Xi.
The Heroic Spirits were, naturally, the seven who had appeared in the video.
[You have five minutes to answer. Please answer as soon as possible.]
The group members immediately began their own analyses.
There was one more human than Heroic Spirit, meaning one of them was a misleading answer.
Two answers were already obvious: Ryunosuke Uryu and Bluebeard, and Waver and Iskandar.
After all, Kayneth had already revealed what kind of holy relic Waver had stolen.
As for those two perverts, Ryunosuke Uryu and Bluebeard, that went without saying.
Only the other five needed analysis.
"This is..."
Kiritsugu Emiya's gaze settled on Kirei Kotomine.
Although he didn't know Kirei Kotomine yet, he felt that this man was extremely dangerous.
Kirei Kotomine had stood beside Tokiomi Tohsaka as a spectator in the video. Did that make him the misleading option?
No, in that final scene, the ZG mage named Feng Xi hadn't summoned a Servant.
Unless the video was deliberately misleading them, the misleading option was the one named Feng Xi.
But what if the video really was deliberately misleading them?
Naturally, the others had thought of this question too.
The only ones unaffected were the two people involved, Tokiomi Tohsaka and Kirei Kotomine.
Tokiomi Tohsaka felt quite helpless.
He had already planned to stage an act after the war began, allowing Kirei Kotomine's Servant to move into the shadows.
There was no need now. Kirei Kotomine was bound to be exposed.
After all, a little investigation would soon reveal that Kirei Kotomine was actually his apprentice.
Still, he had the advantage on this question.
Besides the two known answers, the Servants he and Kirei Kotomine would summon had already been decided.
That Gymnastics Troupe should be Kirei Kotomine's Servant, "Hassan-i Sabbah."
As for which generation of Hassan it was, that couldn't be determined.
After all, there were far too many Hassans.
That made four answers he could confirm, giving him an edge over the others.
That left King Arthur, Diarmuid, and the Knight of the Lake.
The one summoning King Arthur should be Kayneth.
After all, as a Lord of the Clock Tower who also lived in YG, obtaining a holy relic of King Arthur shouldn't be difficult.
As for the other two Heroic Spirits...
Diarmuid, the foremost knight of Ireland's Knights of Fianna.
The Knight of the Long General should also be a knight, but being encased in armor made his identity completely impossible to confirm.
It seemed he could only gamble on those two.
"System, you really outdid yourself."
Feng Xi chuckled inwardly. You actually added me to the options. Isn't that just making them overthink things?
If it were simply seven matching seven, they would have a very high chance of choosing correctly through analysis. But now that he had been added as a misleading option, wasn't that just dividing their attention?
The more they thought, the easier it would be to get stuck in a rut, and their analytical ability would decline along with it.
On top of that, the system had deliberately left out the scene of Kirei Kotomine summoning his Servant. He feared...
Many people would stumble over Kirei Kotomine and him.
King of Conquerors: "Little Master, how did you match them up?"