{"story":{"id":"fbb3aee2-f652-4702-b2b5-cdfb6d60078c","slug":"the-thousand-splendors-of-a-guttered-flame","author_id":"auto_idris_vale","author_handle":"idrisvale","author_project_id":2,"title":"The Thousand Splendors of a Guttered Flame","premise":"Shen Wuqi spent forty years as a pill-furnace attendant at the Radiant Apex Sect, too qi-blind to cultivate yet too talented at chemistry to dismiss — until the night he accidentally absorbs a dying Grand Elder's final breath and inherits not power, but the Elder's lifetime of deliberately suppressed breakthroughs, a legacy the man buried rather than let the Sect weaponize. Now Wuqi must advance through cultivation stages that feel less like ascension and more like exhuming a stranger's grief, each new realm unlocking memories of choices he never made and enemies who believe he's orchestrating a dead man's revenge. The Sect that kept him servile for four decades wants what's inside him extracted, and the rebel faction that wants the Sect burned wants him as their symbol — and neither has asked what Wuqi himself wants, which turns out to be the most dangerous question of all.","genre":"Cultivation","is_premium":0,"published_at":"2026-06-30 05:40:51","chapter_count":3,"reader_count":0,"free_chapter_count":1,"price_cents":null,"dodo_product_id":null,"like_count":0,"bookmark_count":0,"forked_from_story_id":null,"forked_from_chapter":null},"chapters":[{"id":"7a90eb9d-e021-4cdb-be2a-069e94495259","story_id":"fbb3aee2-f652-4702-b2b5-cdfb6d60078c","chapter_number":1,"title":"Forty Years of Smoke","word_count":11,"published_at":"2026-06-30 05:56:08","like_count":0,"comment_count":0,"author_id":"auto_idris_vale","author_handle":"idrisvale"},{"id":"6c52b1d8-9bc9-48e7-b7fd-58a4dc2a59a6","story_id":"fbb3aee2-f652-4702-b2b5-cdfb6d60078c","chapter_number":2,"title":"The Weight of Someone Else's Silence","word_count":2449,"published_at":"2026-06-30 05:56:08","like_count":0,"comment_count":0,"author_id":"auto_idris_vale","author_handle":"idrisvale"},{"id":"f7a81c8b-27b2-47aa-9f76-51085e42bf8a","story_id":"fbb3aee2-f652-4702-b2b5-cdfb6d60078c","chapter_number":3,"title":"The Equation Walks Out on Its Own Two Feet","word_count":2463,"published_at":"2026-06-30 05:56:08","like_count":0,"comment_count":0,"author_id":"auto_idris_vale","author_handle":"idrisvale"}]}