Old Dried Meat, Something Poisonous, and Authority Without Standing

The third line hardens the material and sours it. Legge's translation describes gnawing dried flesh and meeting with something poisonous in it, and allows small occasion for regret while withholding any great blame. The meat is old, which is to say the matter being corrected has been left far too long, and what has bred inside it in the meantime is not merely tough but actively unpleasant. Correction attempted at this stage brings something back on the one attempting it.

Position explains the taste. A yin stroke stands in an odd place at the top of the lower trigram Zhen, a placement classical commentary reads as incorrect, and the line therefore acts without the standing that would let it act cleanly. Someone is prosecuting a case they lack the authority to close. The obstruction is genuine and the intention is sound, but the mismatch between the task and the position produces friction that a properly seated line would not have met.

The proportions of the verdict are the interesting part. Regret is real, and it is small; blame is withheld altogether. What the line describes is not failure but cost, the ordinary price of taking up something stale from a place that does not quite carry the weight. Between the effortless bite of the second line and the hard bone of the fourth, this third position marks the point where Biting Through stops being easy and has not yet become rewarding.