Nacha recognized that this series of disasters smacked of "having no regard for the laws of man or heaven." Fearing that his parents would be implicated, he cut himself to bits to give back to his parents the human form they had given him, thus the expression "slicing flesh to give back to mother, hacking bone to give back to father."
眼見連連闖禍，天法不容，唯恐連累父母，哪吒竟「割肉還母，剔骨還父」。