The story of Nezha

Nezha, third son of Li Jing the garrison commander of Chentang Pass, is in Investiture of the Gods the Numinous Pearl from Taiyi Zhenren’s Golden Light Cave on Qianyuan Mountain, reborn into the human world.

Li Jing’s wife, Lady Yin, carried the child three years and six months before her time came and bore a ball of flesh. Li Jing, taking it for a monster, cut it open with his sword, and an infant sprang out: this was Nezha.

Taiyi Zhenren came to Li Jing’s house at the news, named the child Nezha and took him as a disciple, telling him to stay at Chentang Pass for now and come up the mountain when he was older.

In Nezha’s seventh year, in hot weather, he went to bathe in the Nine-Bend River by the Eastern Sea and shook out the Red Armillary Sash in the water, and the river heaved so that the dragon palace of the Eastern Sea shook with it.

The sea-patrolling yaksha Li Gen came out to look, quarrelled with Nezha and came to blows; Nezha killed him with the Qiankun Ring. The dragon king’s third son Ao Bing came out to avenge him, and was bound by the Red Armillary Sash and killed, his dragon sinew drawn out.

Ao Guang, dragon king of the Eastern Sea, set out to lay charges in heaven, and Nezha stopped and wounded him outside the southern gate. The dragon kings of the four seas then came together to Chentang Pass to demand that Li Jing hand Nezha over.

To spare his parents and the whole town, Nezha cut away his bones for his father and his flesh for his mother in front of them all, returned all of it to the Li family, and his soul left his body with nowhere to go.

Nezha’s soul appeared to Lady Yin in a dream and asked her to build him a shrine on Mount Cuiping, where a few years of incense would let him take a body again; Lady Yin quietly had it built.

When Li Jing learned of it he went to Mount Cuiping in a rage, smashed the gilded image and burnt the shrine. With nowhere left to lodge, Nezha’s soul went to Qianyuan Mountain to beg Taiyi Zhenren for help.

Taiyi Zhenren took lotus flowers and lotus root, laid them out in the shape Nezha had had in life, and drew his soul into them. So Nezha lived again in a body of lotus, with more power than before.

Taiyi Zhenren taught the lotus body the use of the fire-tipped spear, gave him the wind-fire wheels and the golden brick, returned his old Qiankun Ring and Red Armillary Sash, and sent him down to help Jiang Ziya against King Zhou; the Nine-Dragon Divine Fire Cover stayed in Taiyi Zhenren’s hands.

Reborn, Nezha first went after Li Jing to answer for the bones he had returned. Father and son fought in the air and nearly brought disaster on themselves, until Randeng Daoren subdued Nezha with the Exquisite Pagoda and made him bow and admit his fault, and the two were reconciled.

When Jiang Ziya came down and began raising troops at Western Qi, Nezha went to join him and became one of the vanguards of the Zhou army, going out to fight again and again.

The Shang general Zhang Guifang could make men fall from their mounts by calling their names, and the Western Qi officers dropped when he called them. Because Nezha stood on the wind-fire wheels and never touched the ground, the art had no hold on him, and he broke Zhang Guifang’s edge several times.

Nezha also fought the Shang general Li Xingba and many Jie disciples, beating them back with the Qiankun Ring and the Red Armillary Sash; the wind-fire wheels carried him so quickly that he often opened the road for the Zhou camp.

Before he returned his bones, Nezha had tested the Xuanyuan bow and killed Lady Shiji’s boy Biyun by accident. Shiji pursued him to Qianyuan Mountain to demand an accounting, and Taiyi Zhenren burned her back into her original stone with the Nine-Dragon Divine Fire Cover; that old case ended with the loss of Nezha’s body.

When the Jie disciple Luo Xuan, the star lord of fire, besieged Western Qi with clouds of smoke and fire that burned the city, Nezha led his men out to meet him, weaving through the flames on the wind-fire wheels, and with the other officers broke Luo Xuan’s formation apart.

As Jiang Ziya led the army east, the Jie Sect’s Ten Absolutes, the Zhuxian Formation and other deadly arrays blocked the way. Nezha campaigned with the army, mostly supporting from outside a formation or charging before it, and helped the Chan immortals break them.

After Shang was destroyed and the Investiture war ended, Nezha was not entered on the Investiture List; he attained sainthood in the body together with Li Jing, Yang Jian and Lei Zhenzi. Investiture of the Gods does not say when he entered the Heavenly Court.

Journey to the West records that when Sun Wukong made havoc in heaven, the Jade Emperor sent the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King and his third son Nezha with troops to put down Mount Huaguo, and Nezha went out with his father to face Wukong.

Nezha and Wukong fought several passages before the lines, each using every transformation he had, and Nezha could not take him. The heavenly host returned without success, and only then did the Jade Emperor send Taibai Jinxing to offer an amnesty.