We investigate the instability and transformation kinetics of the carbon-induced surface reconstructions on W(1 1 0) by the low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. R(15 3 × ) reconstruction, a moiré pattern of W2C(0 0 0 1) bi-layer on W(1 1 0), is the most carbon-rich reconstruction on the carburized W(1 1 0), which gradually transforms to the most carbon-poor R(15 12 × ) reconstruction by repeated annealing at around 2070 K. In between, various reconstructions, albeit not globally ordered, develop. Notable is that all the ob-served reconstructions are invariably composed of only two kinds of building blocks, namely A-block and B-block. A-block is the surface unit cell of the R(15 3) × reconstruction. During the transformation, the virtually carbon free B-block is created at the cost of two neighboring A-blocks by the annealing. The robustness of the block structure allows us to perform a coarse-grained kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of the transformation i terms of the creation and diffusion of B-blocks on the R(15 3) × lattice that is initially entirely tiled by A-blocks. We find that the transformation kinetics is governed by both the anisotropic creation and diffusion of B-block that are attributed to the instability of A-block driven by the anisotropic compressive stress in it.