As a divinatory line, nine at the sixth place of Decrease reads within the hexagram's overall concern with sincerity in one who practices decrease brings great good fortune, freedom from error, firmness and correctness maintained, advantage in every movement, and even in the use of two small dishes for sacrifice. The line occupies a place that does not match its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. Its own text, that increase brought to others without decrease to himself, no error, firm correctness brings good fortune, advantage in every movement, and he obtains followers who are like family to him, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.
The sixth line corresponds by classical convention with the third line, and the two correspond here, since one line is yin and the other yang. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Gen in the upper position of the figure, the line marks the far edge of the hexagram, past the point the ruling fifth line governs, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.
A change at this line, from yang to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the sixth line of Decrease turns Gen into Kun while the other trigram, Dui, stays as it is, which yields Decrease's changing partner, Approach (King Wen 19), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.