The third line delivers the starkest image in the hexagram: the army may carry corpses in its wagons, a sign of possible defeat when command is divided or careless. Where the first two lines concern the foundation of discipline and the concentration of authority in a single capable commander, line three shows what happens when that concentration fails, when command is shared, contested, or handled without sufficient care. The image is deliberately blunt rather than euphemistic, the wagons that should carry supplies instead carrying the dead, and later commentary consistently reads this line as a warning specifically against divided leadership rather than against the campaign itself. Positioned at the top of the lower trigram, the point where the situation is about to shift from one condition into the next, the line marks a moment of real instability, not because the cause is unjust but because the structure meant to direct the army's strength has itself become uncertain.
Read against line two's single, trusted commander, line three is effectively its negative image, showing precisely what is lost when that same concentration of authority is allowed to fracture. The hexagram offers no remedy within this line itself, only the diagnosis, leaving the correction to be read in the lines that surround it, particularly the concentrated command described just above it.