“There are not more than two methods of attack — the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of manoeuvres.”
The whole art is in how direct and indirect lead into each other; study the transition, not the categories.
The musical analogy narrows to its sharpest form: not more than two methods of attack — the direct and the indirect — yet together an endless series of manoeuvres. Sun Tzu has reduced all of tactics to two notes and is promising the whole of music anyway. The profundity is in the "in combination": the endless series lives in the transitions, where a direct move sets up an indirect one and vice versa, each borrowing the other’s credibility.
A negotiator opens direct — honest terms, plain value, sincerely meant — and watches which part the other side dismisses. Her indirect second move arrives through that dismissal: the "throwaway" clause they ignored becomes the pivot of the deal, because it was drafted to matter. Next quarter the same two moves run in reverse order. Two methods, a career of manoeuvres.
Direct and indirect are not "honest and dishonest" — both are fully legitimate, and the direct is not a costume. The error is playing them in alternation by rote: patterned alternation is just another pattern, and Chapter 7 will warn that repeated tactics lose. The combination must be composed for the position, not shuffled from habit.