遯 → 小過

Commentary

Heaven above the mountain exceeds as thunder over mountain — Small Exceeding, where the small oversteps its bounds. Riding a piebald and a dappled horse, one travels south to trade at Taihang Mountain. On the road one meets a fearsome mottled tiger, and is devoured. The burial takes place at Weiyang, south of the Wei River. The verse is a straightforward tale of fatal miscalculation: a merchant ventures into dangerous terrain and encounters a predator he cannot escape. Taihang is the great mountain range dividing the North China Plain from the Shanxi plateau — forbidding territory for a trader with fine horses. From Retreat to Small Exceeding, the mountain's withdrawal becomes the thunder atop the mountain — a small creature overreaching. The merchant who should have retreated further instead advanced into tiger country, and the small exceeded its capacity with lethal consequences.