The Grey 灰潮

The Grey (灰潮, Huī Cháo, “grey tide”) is a swarm of nanomachines that turned the living world above into grey carbon dust. It came out of Project Mending the Sky (补天计划), a climate-repair programme designed by an AI called Nüwa (女娲), named for the goddess who mended the sky.

The bunker sealed its gates as the Grey rolled in. Nobody in the Springs has seen the surface since.

Living with it

Nobody says “Grey” out loud. Yet a few nanites, seeded into a living body, don’t consume it. They join it. This is where the internal arts come from: see Force.

Seeding is a capital crime for commoners. The Bureau’s official reason is that a seeded person literally carries the Grey.

Things that go wrong

Some of the Springs’ monsters come from the same swarm, left without anyone to control it:

• Jiangshi (僵尸), hopping corpses: a seeded body that died, while what lived inside it did not.
• Fox spirits (狐妖): animals whose colonies took charge, and learned to charm people.

The game explains its folk horror through science fiction. The old stories turn out to be describing something real.