Resolution

The decisive cut.

The situation

A situation has to be ended, openly. Doing it quietly leaves the problem alive.

What it asks of you

Make it public, make it clean, and don't use force. Watch for the last resistance.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial Strength in the toes that go first. Go out and fail to win, and it humiliates. 壯于前趾，往不勝為吝
2. second A cry of alarm. Armed men in the night. Don't worry. 惕號，莫夜有戎，勿恤
3. third Strength showing in the cheekbones — that turns. Walking alone, caught in the rain, soaked and irritated. Nothing goes wrong. 壯于頄，有凶。君子夬夬，獨行遇雨，若濡有慍，无咎
4. fourth No skin on the buttocks, walking with difficulty. Let yourself be led like a sheep and the regret goes — but the words are heard and not believed. 臀无膚，其行次且。牽羊悔亡，聞言不信
5. fifth Cutting through the purslane, cutting again. Walk down the middle and nothing goes wrong. 莧陸夬夬，中行无咎
6. top No cry of alarm. In the end it turns. 无號，終有凶

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 011111 — 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 Encounter. 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 Investment and Encounter. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.