離 → 夬

Commentary

Doubled fire meets the lake rising above heaven: brilliance is cut short at its zenith. Life is brief, cut short in middle age. Ghosts weep and wail in the hall, mourning the loss of their child. The verse is starkly about premature death and the grief of ancestors witnessing their line truncated. No historical allusion softens the blow; this is the raw imagery of a household emptied by untimely loss. From The Clinging to Breakthrough, fire's intensity meets the lake overflowing heaven — a volatile, unsustainable configuration. Breakthrough (Guai) demands decisive action to remove what is decayed, but here the decisiveness belongs to death itself, which breaks through life's defenses at the worst possible moment, leaving only the keening of the bereaved.