Erosion

Support falling away, piece by piece.

The situation

The base is being stripped. This isn't the moment for expansion or bold declarations.

What it asks of you

Hold still, protect the foundation, and wait. This state ends by turning, not by fighting.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial The bed stripped down through its legs. What holds it up is gone. 剝床以足，蔑貞凶
2. second The bed stripped down through its frame. What holds it up is gone. 剝床以辨，蔑貞凶
3. third Stripped away, and nothing goes wrong. 剝之，无咎
4. fourth The bed stripped down to the skin lying on it. 剝床以膚，凶
5. fifth Fish on a string, the palace women brought in order. Nothing here does not work. 貫魚，以宮人寵，无不利
6. top One large fruit left uneaten. The better man is given a carriage; the small man's own roof comes off. 碩果不食，君子得輿，小人剝廬

The line texts are the oldest layer of the book. They are pictures, not instructions, and they are meant to be held against your own situation rather than decoded.

How this one is built

Written out as six lines, bottom to top, this pattern is 100000 — a solid line is 1, a broken line is 0. Every relationship above is arithmetic on those six digits, not interpretation: reverse the order and you get the other side, flip every digit and you get the opposite reading, take the middle four and you get what sits underneath. Anyone can check the result, which is what separates a structure from a fortune.

The sequence is built the same way. The sixty-four are arranged in thirty-two pairs, and turned upside down it becomes Turning Point. The rule holds for all thirty-two pairs without exception — twenty-eight joined by reversal, four by inversion.

In the received order it sits between Presentation and Turning Point. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.