Ten

Ten is the number of completion in the counted series — the full set of stems, and the round ending of the decade. Ten's structural role is the ten heavenly stems, the cycle that pairs with the twelve branches to produce the sixty-year count.

The reading usually rests on sound and on cosmology rather than on quantity. Ten is the number of completion in the counted series — the full set of stems, and the round ending of the decade. The completeness idiom is the operative one: ten-full is the phrase the tradition uses for a thing lacking nothing.

Sources treat ten as the complete decimal set, and the phrase for 'ten complete ten beautiful' is the conventional expression of total fulfilment. It is grouped under Earth (土) in the five-element system.