Investment

Putting resources downward.

The situation

Feeding what's below you — team, users, foundation — pays back disproportionately in this state.

What it asks of you

Act now, while the window is open. Copy what works, correct what doesn't.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial Now do the large piece of work. As good as it gets. 利用為大作，元吉，无咎
2. second Someone adds a tortoise worth ten strings of coin, and it cannot be refused. The king makes his offering to the highest. 或益之十朋之龜，弗克違。永貞吉。王用享于帝，吉
3. third Increase used on hard events. Nothing goes wrong. Sincerity, walking down the middle, and the jade tablet held up to the duke. 益之用凶事，无咎。有孚中行，告公用圭
4. fourth Walking down the middle. The duke agrees. Now the capital can be moved. 中行，告公從。利用為依遷國
5. fifth Sincerity, and a mind that gives. Don't ask — it is as good as it gets. 有孚惠心，勿問元吉。有孚惠我德
6. top Nobody adds anything to him, and someone strikes him. A heart that will not stay put. 莫益之，或擊之。立心勿恆，凶

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 110001 — 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 Reduction. 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 Reduction and Resolution. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.