Can someone explain the mechanism here? Mama fox hunts but technically fulfils her spirit pact by giving away her children as due recompense knowing that those children will be rejected so she gets to consume them. She's having her cake and eating it right?
This really changes the impression I had on Su Ling's mother. She isn't just some random 4th grade spirit hunting humans to eat them or just for the pleasure of murdering. She isn't even "taking revenge" because their ancestors broke some pack with the fox spirits.
No, for who knows how long, she has been kidnapping men in order to have half blooded child with them. Then she bribes the people so they raise her children as sacrifices. The people hate and fear her, and so they abuse the kids because they know she doesn't care for them. Finally, the people give the kids back and she eats them in order to become stronger.
That's... That's horrifying.
Su Ling was really lucky that her grandmother, the only herbolist in the village, adopted her, and kept her safe from the villagers. And that the Ministry guy found her.
Who knows how many kids suffered the same fate before her.
There is a presumption of intent here that is unclear
Su Ling's mother is a remnant from the broken pacts between spirits and men, probably a decendant of those spirits rather than an immediate member of the spirits in question
And in absence of those pacts she prowls from city to city "taking what she is owed" (the life of the men she mates with) and leaves them gifts, which includes the children she bore, but then the villagers give them back and she grows stronger through that act of sacrifice
The thing is, I don't think there's any actual formal cult, or deliberate intention to sacrifice the kids to her
This isn't some Yamata no Orochi scenario where they're placating the beast with maidens
Consider how many of these kids died
Xisheng, now a little boy with mornful blue eyes and muddy hair, his dark furred ears twitched as he tilted his head, and his nose was black with frostbite.
Said the ghost, once again the young girl with twigs and leaves in her hair. The shadows of bruises and the scent of burning hair wafted gently from her.
asked the little ghost, through a broken jaw and a mouth of shattered teeth.
Death from exposure in winter, death from being beaten and burned, death from being beaten
These kids were not raised and then ritualistically given back to Mother, they were rejected, scorned and died young, well before ever meeting her
Consider how Su Ling was taken in by a kind old lady, and Mother never came back for her, she didn't raze the settlement looking for her sacrifice, she didn't hunt Su Ling down expecting to claim what she was owed
As Xisheng puts it Mother gives them the "prettiest gifts", but then the people "give them back" to her by rejecting them
"What's a monster, sister?" asked the little ghost, through a broken jaw and a mouth of shattered teeth. "Is it another word for a human?"