Old legend says the yu creature hid in the water and spat sand to harm passers-by.
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蜮 is not used independently in modern Chinese. It survives in the idiom 鬼蜮伎俩 (vicious underhanded tricks), where the sand-spitting demon stands for a hidden, treacherous attacker. The phonetic is 或.
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Archaic and literary only, found in old myth texts and set idioms, not in everyday speech.
