"Bring me a jar of wine," Fang Yuan said as he sat inside the nearly empty tavern.
His voice carried across the room without meeting a single pair of eyes; the workers moved quietly, avoiding unnecessary words.
The tavern looked the same as always, yet something in the air felt heavier, as if the place had been waiting too long for customers that no longer came.
Three weeks had passed since he refined the Four Flavours Liquor Worm.
He had anticipated fluctuations, maybe a few unexpected turns, but the series of events that followed had gone beyond anything he had anticipated.
It was not dramatic, not loud—just a steady decline that kept tightening around the tavern bit by bit.
The first sign came the morning after the refinement.
He'd walked in to survey the business, expecting the usual noise of regular patrons.
Instead, he found two mortals locked in a senseless fight.
A chair had been split apart, a table overturned, a few jars cracked on the floor.
It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't minor either, and the stubborn refusal of the two men to calm down forced Fang Yuan to act.
He killed them quickly.
There was nothing else to do with troublemakers who damaged his property.
The next day, another problem surfaced.
A female customer complained about finding a cockroach in her food.
The workers denied negligence, but it didn't matter.
Once a story like that spread, people remembered it.
Within the same week, another man choked while eating and died on the spot.
No one could explain how he managed to swallow incorrectly to that extent, but explanations didn't matter.
A corpse in a tavern never benefitted business.
Then came the second week.
A drunk, elderly gu master who drank here nearly every evening went home and passed away during the night.
Whether alcohol was involved or not, the villagers didn't distinguish; they simply said he'd drunk here that evening, and that was enough to shift more eyes away from the tavern.
The third week brought the worst incident.
A fire started in the wine storage late at night.
Fang Yuan arrived fast enough to prevent it from spreading to the main building, but most of the stored wine was lost, charred into uselessness.
The workers were still shaken, speaking in low voices and moving carefully, as if they expected another accident.
And as if all of this hadn't been enough, a new tavern opened just days ago in the village.
Clean, lively, untouched by misfortune.
People naturally drifted toward it, leaving this place quieter with each passing day.
The jar of wine finally arrived.
The worker who brought it avoided meeting Fang Yuan's gaze.
The wine was one of the few batches that had survived the fire.
Fang Yuan lifted it, examined the wine, and drank without haste.
The taste was acceptable.
"So this is how it is…" he murmured, almost to himself.
His face showed a hint of helplessness, but it was the kind of expression one wore for others, not a reflection of anything he actually felt.
People in the village had already begun whispering that his tavern had simply run out of luck.
Three weeks of accidents, deaths, and misfortune are enough to shut down any business.
To them, bad luck was explanation enough.
But... he understood the real cause far more clearly.
'Heaven's Will.'
It nudged the world in small ways, subtle enough that ordinary minds would never notice.
A fight breaking out one morning, a customer choking the next week, a fire blooming at the worst possible moment—these weren't coincidences.
They were deliberate obstacles placed in his path, one after another, to slow his advancement and smother any advantage he created.
Knowing this, Fang Yuan didn't rage, didn't blame the circumstances, and didn't rush to patch the damages.
He simply watched the tavern empty out day by day, employees losing confidence, customers drifting to the newer establishment across the village.
It was like observing rainwater drain from a cracked basin—inevitable, predictable, without the slightest need for emotional investment.
Inside, he remained entirely steady.
'Heaven's Will,' he thought, his mind as quiet as the nearly deserted room.
'So, you're nudging the world again, trying to slow me down.'
It didn't surprise him.
He had expected this from the moment he refined the Four Flavours Liquor Worm.
Heaven's Will rarely stayed idle when it noticed inconsistencies. He had already calculated that it would push back in some way, and this time its method was clear: steady, persistent pressure.
Nothing fatal, nothing dramatic—just a continuous tightening meant to slow him down and hold him in place.
He let the thought settle, then smirked faintly, a small curve of the lips that carried no warmth.
He had countless methods to deal with these interruptions.
If he chose to counter them one by one, he could force his way through each tribulation as it appeared.
But he also understood the pattern.
If he overcame today's obstruction, tomorrow's would be worse.
If he rose above a dozen, a thirteenth would be waiting.
The cycle would continue without pause.
Why waste effort fighting each small wave, when a tide never ends?
Instead, he would do what the situation required: nothing.
Let Heaven's Will believe it had succeeded.
Let it think it had trimmed his ambitions.
Let it claim victories that cost him nothing.
If it wanted the tavern ruined, then it could have it.
Fang Yuan leaned back slightly, his gaze drifting over the silent room.
Broken business?
Loss of customers?
A drop in income?
None of it mattered.
Primeval stones were only resources; they could be gathered again.
Reputation was a passing thing. Status even more so.
These were tools, not goals.
'I don't need a thriving tavern,' he thought slowly.
'I don't need praise or comfort or the illusion of stability.'
What he needed was singular.
A result.
A way out of the shackles tightening around him.
A path forward that even Heaven's Will couldn't cut off.
He lifted the jar again, not to drink, but to simply feel its weight in his hand.
The tavern might fall.
The village might gossip.
Heaven's Will might interfere.
None of it changed the direction he was walking.
And none of it changed the fact that, eventually, he would break free.