When my nieces and nephew were very young, I loved to take them for walks and often I would tell them the same old story of a little boy made from lotus roots. Well, I didn't tell them that this was Nezha or Na Zha (Chinese: 哪吒; pinyin: Nézhā; Japanese: Nataku or Nata), a deity originally of Chinese mythology but introduced to the West through Japanese anime. Nezha is often depicted flying in the sky with a wheel of fire under each foot, a golden hoop around his shoulder and a spear in his hands. His mother conceived for three and a half years and had delivered a meat ball which his commander father had split with a sword. Nezha had jumped out of the meat ball fully grown but with a mischievous temperament of a child. He got himself into many troubles and after killing Ao Bing, the third son of East Sea Dragon King Ao Guang, Nezha was forced to disemboweled himself, but was later brought back to life by Taiyi Zhenren, a Taoist immortal sage who used lotus blossoms to reconstruct a body for his soul to inhabit. My nieces and nephew love the story of Nezha dearly and I hope you would too...
Can you identify Nezha here?
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