I Cultivated Too Long and Got Isekai’d Into a Game

The air was still.

Wu Zetian stepped into the chamber. Her hard slippers made no sound against the polished mirror-like floor. No, not only the floor, but even the walls and ceiling were made of mirrors.

These drank in the light like black water, and when they returned it, they gave no reflection of her present self.

Instead, they showed fragments of her past.

A child's face stared out from the first mirror, her own, barely nine years old, head bowed as her father, Wu Shihuo, the Duke of Ying, praised her brothers but overlooked her.

She had been born to privilege, yes, but privilege was only an ornament for a girl; her father's wealth could not buy her place in the histories.

"You are clever," the mirror whispered with her father's voice, "but a daughter's cleverness brings only trouble."

Wu Zetian's lips curled down, but she quickly covered them with her fan. She moved on, refusing to meet the child's eyes.

The next mirror was sharper.

She saw herself at thirteen, leaving the family home in Wenshui, the wooden gates closing behind her as she was taken to Chang'an. She had been chosen for the imperial court. Not for her wit, not for her learning, but for her beauty.

She remembered the carriage ride, her heart caught between excitement and a fear she did not dare name.

"You were sent as an ornament to amuse a man you had never met," the glass sneered in a voice so familiar to her, her very own voice. "Was that victory, little Wu Zhao, or the first chain around your neck?"

Her jaw tightened.

The third mirror showed her kneeling before Tang Taizong.

He was younger than she had remembered him, vigorous and sharp-eyed, yet already burdened with the weight of an empire. She was one of many in his harem, her silk robes crimson and her hair coiled like a serpent. In the mirror, she was smiling... but in reality, she remembered how her heart pounded like it wanted to get out of her chest.

"You thought you would captivate him and rise," the voice in the glass mocked. "Yet how many nights did you wait alone, your clever words unsaid? How many times did you bow, knowing your face would fade from his memory by morning?"

The image rippled.

Around her, all the mirrors began to stir, each surface showing another failure; a moment she had been ignored, underestimated, or dismissed. The mocking noise of her voice gradually melted into a single chorus, reviving painful memories she kept deep in her heart.

Wu Zetian closed her eyes.

"That's not true!"

She growled in a rumbling voice, defiant.

"My Emperor, Tang Taizong, taught me how to love. He taught me the bitterness of regret and the sweet nectar of ecstasy. He promised to love me for all eternity, no matter how far apart we may be!"

"Are you sure?" But as if mocking her, the mirror's voice continued. "Right now... is he even looking at you?"

"...!"

That sentence became the last straw.

Zetian's mind, which she barely kept intact, finally shattered. Negative energies began to rush toward her, swirling into a powerful whirlwind... an indication of Qi Deviation!

Just one vaguely true sentence was enough to almost break her Dao Heart!

"Urgh...!"

Feeling her Qi running in reverse, she vomited blood. Her vitals were all over the place, and even her senses started to bug out.

At that moment, a figure appeared... Xu Tao.

His wide back stood just ahead of Zetian's eyes, seemingly close enough to reach, but still too far.

"Enough, you mirror demon."

He spoke, voice clear and resonating.

"Don't you dare touch what's mine." And he declared so.

They were words that the clone didn't think through, simply coming out as naturally as any words he said. Zetian, who heard this, felt her heart tighten.

"I... am my Emperor's...!" She gasped, a mix of bliss and realization in her voice. "So my Emperor does love me, he just doesn't show it!"

"Huh? Well, I..."

But just as Xu Tao's clone was about to clarify things, changes began to occur.

The rampaging negative energy dissipated. Along with it, the image displayed on the mirrors completely changed, too. Instead of Zetian's childhood, it now showed scenes of a certain Emperor... Xu Tao's past life.

"The fuck?"

Xu Tao's clone watched, completely bewildered by it.

Seeing his face in the mirror, doing things he couldn't remember doing, felt so surreal. Most of all, since this vision appeared, it confirmed that Xu Tao truly was Emperor Tang Taizong in one of his past lives!

One scene, in particular, caught the pair's eyes.

A scene where a younger version of Zetian stood by the ailing Tang Taizong's bedside.

Her position in the harem was too low, somewhere between an ornament and a shadow. Still, there she was, standing by the Emperor's side without fail, worrying for his health.

"Xiao Zhao," he murmured, his voice as thin as rice paper.

She knelt, lowering her head until her forehead brushed the cold floor. "Your Majesty."

Taizong's eyes moved, glancing at her figure, a hint of sadness in his flickering eyes. He parted his lips, as if hesitating about which words to use, to say.

"You're… wasted here," he said slowly, each word pulled from somewhere deep. "Too bright… to be a bird in a cage..."

COUGH! COUGH!

He looked like he wanted to relay something, but his violent cough stopped him.

Fearing that she might catch the Emperor's disease too and spread it around the palace, Zetian was dismissed. Taizong's gaze followed her sad, fading back, shaky arms outstretched, lips parting with words unsaid.

"This..."

Zetian sighed.

She could remember that time, the final time she had seen the Emperor.

To her, that memory was a bitter one. After all, she barely had time to talk to him before getting forced out by the imperial doctors. However, she couldn't believe it became one of the Emperor's regrets, too.

"What was it that he wanted to say..." she whispered, wondering.

Of course, the memory entered a loop without clarifying what his regret was. Even Xu Tao's clone had no idea. It was a memory he didn't have, after all.

"...I want to figure it out."

Zetian's expression straightened up. With a wave of her sleeve, her injuries were healed. The rampaging Qi caused by Qi Deviation was already calm enough that one would wonder if the Deviation truly happened.

With a firm voice, she declared:

"I will watch all the memories here, and find out what my Emperor wanted to say!"

"..."

Xu Tao's clone had no choice but to let her be. He only guided her toward the "right" path, waiting until she finished watching all the memories on display.

Memories of Tang Taizong... and memories of Xu Tao.

In the end, it was half an hour later when she finally left the mirror maze. Together with a shriveled-up clone.