The top of the stele is carved with a coiling pair of hornless dragons.
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螭 is rare in modern Chinese, surviving in art and archaeology terms like 螭首 (dragon-head stone carving) and 螭吻 (a roof-ridge ornament). It is also a variant of 魑 (mountain demon), as in 魑魅魍魉.
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Literary and classical only, encountered in old texts, museum labels and etymology notes, not in everyday speech.
The 虫 radical here marks a serpentine creature; in old graphs dragons and snakes were grouped with crawling things, so this dragon-word takes the bug radical.
