The Source

The thing everyone draws from.

The situation

There's an underlying resource that doesn't move even as everything around it changes. It needs maintenance nobody notices.

What it asks of you

Maintain the well. Finish what you start with it.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial Mud at the bottom of the well; nobody drinks. An old well that even the animals leave alone. 井泥不食，舊井无禽
2. second Down the shaft, shooting at the minnows. The jug is cracked and leaks. 井谷射鮒，甕敝漏
3. third The well is cleaned out and still nobody drinks. This is a grief to me. It could be drawn from — if the king had eyes, everyone would share in it. 井渫不食，為我心惻。可用汲，王明並受其福
4. fourth The well lined with brick. Nothing goes wrong. 井甃，无咎
5. fifth The well runs clear. A cold spring to drink from. 井洌，寒泉食
6. top The well is drawn from and left uncovered. Sincerity; as good as it gets. 井收勿幕，有孚元吉

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 010110 — 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 Constraint. 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 Constraint and Overhaul. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.