Nine in the third place, taken as a changing line, warns of strain rather than failure, the household image of a couple who can no longer look at each other directly, or a cart whose binding strap has slipped. The querent is shown the cost of standing at the exact boundary where a gentle restraint first presses against a strong, advancing force, close enough to feel checked without yet being stopped.
Flipping this line changes the lower trigram from Qian to Dui, Lake, giving Xun over Dui, the hexagram called Inner Truth. The tension of averted eyes and a loosened strap resolves, on the far side of change, into a hexagram built on sincerity reaching even the least approachable creatures, pigs and fish, an image of trust so complete it needs no visible bond at all. The movement is striking: the very line that shows strained, indirect relations is the one whose transformation produces the hexagram most associated with unforced, penetrating good faith.
In the arc of Small Taming, the third line marks the last position before the yielding fourth line itself, the point where the small force's proximity is felt most sharply by the still unchecked trigram beneath it. A reading landing here suggests that present strain is not the end of the matter, and that what looks like strained connection can, once changed, become the hexagram's own picture of trust restored.