Mist Gathering

Biodata

Overview

Mist Gathering is a gray, mist-filled space that draws people through doors and forces them into supernatural missions set in “Past Worlds.” Its participants do not know where it is or what it ultimately is, and every known rule has been learned through casualties rather than explained by the entity itself 4 35.

Initially, forty-nine names hover within the space in gray mist. Names selected for a mission turn blood-red; if a name fades into gray mist, its owner has died permanently 5 6 13. Following twelve deaths and the arrival of only one newcomer, the participant total falls to thirty-eight, indicating that the usual total is no longer being replenished 47 48.

Appearance

Mist Gathering manifests as an enclosed expanse of dense gray fog populated by scattered, silent participants. Two narrow red moons hang above its mist-shrouded sky, resembling crimson eyes 4 13.

• Gray mist can condense into the names of all current participants and the text of mission clues 5 6.
• Selected names become blood-red and remain suspended after their owners are transported away 5 6.
• The space is associated with a door that opens through a key; Bai Yanliang’s silver key can unlock his bedroom door despite their apparent incompatibility 42 47.
• During a completed mission’s return, red mist retrieves survivors from the Past World before they reappear in Mist Gathering 30.

Operations

Summoning

Participants experience a suffocating sensation and an accelerated heartbeat before a summons. Resisting the summons is effectively fatal: the longest anyone is known to have held out lasted three days 5 47.

Bai Yanliang’s first entry differed from the usual process because his door was unlocked with a key left by his brother, Bai Yanren. He was not compelled to open it himself 5 35.

Mission Selection

Mist Gathering forms the participants’ names from gray mist, then selects mission groups by turning names blood-red 5 6. Each selected group receives a line of text—known as a Jieyu—that provides a possible survival route, warning, or deceptive trap 6 9.

The curse can begin as soon as names turn red, before participants enter the Past World. In Yu Hanzhou’s group, most members violated the “do not look back” taboo inside Mist Gathering itself when they turned toward a woman calling his name 29 37.

Grudge-Bound

A Grudge-Bound is the participant most intensely targeted by a mission’s ghost. The role may also provide advantages, though its exact benefits are not detailed 6 8.

A previously understood rule held that a Grudge-Bound who survived would be skipped during the next selection. This rule failed when Bai Yanliang and Yu Hanzhou were selected again immediately after surviving their prior missions 48.

Known Rules and Phenomena

History

Mist Gathering was already trapping numerous people when Bai Yanliang entered. Zhou Li explained that its inhabitants were periodically forced into “damned, ghost-ridden” tasks, while the gathered participants carried an atmosphere of accumulated despair 4.

Its normal structure began to destabilize during Bai Yanliang’s first mission cycle. A newcomer became Grudge-Bound, a Survival Mission appeared in the second group rather than the final group, and Wei Xiu’s entire group was wiped out 25. The wipeout permanently converted the group’s scenario—“hide from the moon in the mountains, retrieve a coffin from beneath the water”—into a future mission for all survivors 13.

The anomalies continued at the next gathering. Only one newcomer arrived instead of enough people to restore the group to forty-nine, and seven people were selected as Grudge-Bound across three missions, including Bai Yanliang and Yu Hanzhou for a second consecutive time 47 48.

Notable Missions