#fox spirits don't really work this way

[justawanderingbabbit]

I'm making up stuff again for a plot hole in one of my fandoms. But, really, who told Xu Lei to put an interesting concept into his stories then (apparently?) do little with it?

More on the Green Eyed Fox Spirit under the cut. Warning, I get windy on my obsessions. (From here on, I'm going to call them qingyan huli, though I may have the Chinese wrong(1))

(1) Feel free to correct me as to what the Chinese term actually is in the books. I failed to learn my mother's language properly and have to struggle with dictionaries to get where I want to be.

In the first Lost Tomb series, the gang come across the corpse of a qingyan huli.

Uncle Sanxing tells Wu Xie that qingyan huli do something to those who find their bodies that means the next child they father will end up with green eyes and that they mess with people's heads and cause delusions.

So far, I've found nothing else about the creatures in either mythology or the Grave Robbers canon. Well, except for a qingyan huli corpse hanging around in Tomb of the Sea's 'computer' room.

So, because I'm given to making stuff up and because this may matter in my future fanfic, here's my theory about what these beasties actually do.

First off, it's clear there's more than one qingyan huli around in the Lost Tomb universe. They dispose of the first one back in the first series and as far as I know, he's never mentioned again. That means the one in Tomb of the Sea isn't likely to be the same being. He doesn't look exactly the same, either, but this is DMBJ and consistency isn't an option.

Therefore, for the purposes of my fanfic; qingyan huli have three stages. The first is where they're basic fox spirits cultivating into human form. Unlike the classic huli jing, however, they're always male and can't reproduce with their cousins.

The second stage is when they're able to turn human. At this point they can reproduce with humans and often do so. The resulting children are mostly human with a rare case of a new qingyan huli being born.

During the second stage, a qingyan huli can survive mortal injuries by transforming to their fox form. This sets them back cultivationally but they usually recover fairly quickly. If they don't transform, however, they're forced into the next stage.

In third stage, the qingyan huli's mortal body fails to recover from whatever death blow ended it. Either they got too old or they weren't able/willing to change to a fox to survive. (Generally the former). Depending on their physical age at the time, they're psychically strong, even if they can't move around anymore. (Lich? Demi-lich?)

At this point, if they want to try to get stronger, they can pass their spiritual essence on, choosing a human male to engender their next body.

This means the green-eyed child mentioned by Uncle Sanxing is the next mortal form of the deceased qingyan huli. What's passed on are memories and spiritual essence, leaving the resulting child to have to cope with both their new life and whatever bits and pieces they remember from the last.

If raised properly, the qingyan huli child will be mostly decent, if a bit of a trouble maker (because fox). If raised roughly, well, garbage in, garbage out.

Further note for the fanfic universe. The qingyan huli encountered in the Wang compound isn't the oldest or strongest of his kind. That one's still out there, still causing trouble and will probably cause more trouble in the future.