Threshold

Almost across, not yet.

The situation

The crossing is nearly done and this is where it gets lost — the last stretch, the tired stretch.

What it asks of you

Sort out what goes where, and don't get careless at the final step.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial Wetting the tail. Humiliating. 濡其尾，吝
2. second Dragging the wheel back. This holds. 曳其輪，貞吉
3. third Not across yet. Setting out turns — and it is worth crossing the great river. 未濟，征凶，利涉大川
4. fourth This holds and the regret goes. Thunder used to take the Devil's Country; in three years, rewards from the great country. 貞吉，悔亡。震用伐鬼方，三年有賞于大國
5. fifth This holds; no regret. The light of the better man, and sincerity in it. 貞吉，无悔。君子之光，有孚，吉
6. top Sincerity, and drinking wine with it. Nothing goes wrong. Wet your head in it and the sincerity itself is lost. 有孚于飲酒，无咎。濡其首，有孚失是

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 101010 — 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 Completion. 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 Completion and the end. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.