Nine in the fifth place delivers almost no verdict at all, and for a ruling line that is a striking result. Neither blame nor praise is the whole of the judgement, and the commentary's question, how could it last, supplies the reason. Read divinatorially, this describes an arrangement doing no harm, attracting no criticism and producing nothing that will outlive it. A querent drawing this line is usually hoping for an assessment and is being told, quite deliberately, that there is not one to be had.
The line's isolation explains the flatness. It is strong, central and correctly placed at the seat of authority in the upper trigram Dui, which ought to be an excellent position, but the second place that would answer it is strong as well, leaving no correspondence below. Its only connection is the yielding line above, at the outer edge of the figure. A decayed willow flowering rather than shooting is the image for exactly that: activity at the tip, nothing at the root.
The text's household comparison, an older wife with a young husband, carries the Zhou period's own assumptions about marriage and heirs and is set down here as it stands rather than adjusted. What survives the framing is practical. Where an arrangement cannot renew itself, the useful question is not whether to condemn it but how long it needs to hold. When the line changes, the upper trigram Dui becomes Zhen and the figure becomes Duration, King Wen 32, which is the one thing this line does not have.