The Gap Between Reality and Fiction (Revised)

Five years later.

Aeo Zod, also known as Zhou Xiao, had been about as ordinary as anyone could be—a hapless fellow who'd gone to sleep and woken up in another world. He swore he hadn't encountered anything unusual. He'd simply spent the evening typing as usual. Yes, you read that right: in 2017, he'd been an utterly unsuccessful rookie writer on a certain Chinese web-fiction site. That day, after another dull, tedious stretch in front of his computer, he'd flopped onto his bed, exhausted. Then he'd opened his eyes and found himself in the world of Krypton!

Several passing soldiers saw Aeo approaching with a grim expression and saluted the heir of the Zod family, who was destined to become the Empire's next Military Leader.

Aeo nodded in return.

Unlike the various Superman movies and comics Aeo had watched before his transmigration, General Zod had a son—but the boy had been grown directly from an embryo using biological technology. Apart from having been made with General Zod's DNA, he and Zod had no real father-son relationship!

But in the Fortier Empire, none of that was a problem.

Because they relied on genetic inheritance, Kryptonians understood bloodlines very differently from people on Earth before Aeo's transmigration. In reality, as long as someone inherited a person's genes, the newborn Kryptonian was naturally considered the descendant of that genetic source. The Kryptonians' biotechnology was only one of many fields in which they were astonishingly advanced. Their energy, military, and social systems were all far more powerful and believable than in the movies and comics Aeo had seen before his transmigration.

Yes, believable.

In the movies, an entire Kryptonian civilization had only one ship escape the planet's destruction—General Zod's. Its highest governing body was called the Council of Truth, and Krypton was destroyed by a core eruption. Those were all cut-down plot points that comic writers and directors had clearly cooked up to save themselves the effort and expense of imagining something better. In reality, Kryptonians didn't even call themselves Kryptonians. They called themselves Fortier—just as the tauren in Warcraft didn't call themselves tauren, but often referred to themselves as Shu'halo. They were a mighty race with a complete civilization stretching back a hundred thousand years. They had left their home planet long ago and used stargates to build an empire spanning dozens of light-years, with more than a hundred Colony Planets!

The Fortier Empire they'd established was a super-civilization so powerful that the backward Earth civilization Aeo had once belonged to—whose people had naively believed they were the only life in the universe—couldn't even imagine it.

Besides, the movies said Krypton had been destroyed by a core eruption. But Kryptonians could travel through wormholes and alter the terrain and climate of planets. How could they possibly have gone extinct because their planet ran short of energy, after draining its core and triggering its own destruction? That plot made no sense...

So when Aeo saw that Krypton was, in reality, a vast, verdant planet, filled with beautiful mountains, forests, lakes, and giant creatures, he hardly knew what to say. It was a huge green world whose civilization had outgrown its home planet and ventured into space—and whose ecosystem had been restored by a super-civilization.

Also, Krypton was a third larger than Earth, and its gravity was stronger. That meant Kryptonians were still incredibly strong even without solar radiation.

Most of the life on the planet had also evolved to gigantic proportions. Take the flying dragon ridden by Superman's father in Man of Steel, the movie Aeo had seen before his transmigration. Creatures like that weren't exactly everywhere on Krypton, but there were still tens of thousands of them.

And just as the movies had said, the Fortier had moved on from natural childbirth to genetic engineering. But each newborn Fortier was created through meticulous Gene Modulation and inheritance overseen by the Empire!

Every future citizen of the Fortier Empire was carefully shaped by their inherited genes to become the sort of talent they were meant to be. A soldier's descendant was bound to become a soldier; a scientist's descendant would most likely become a scientist. This ensured the perfect and harmonious development of the entire Fortier Civilization. That didn't mean a Kryptonian who inherited a scientist's genes couldn't sell fruit, of course. Inheritance only gave you an advantage in a certain field, guiding you toward becoming a valuable member of society. But if you really didn't want to build rockets and chose to sell fruit instead, how the hell could anyone force you into space?

Besides, the Fortier Empire was a civilization on a cosmic scale. Its society was just as advanced as its technology.

Though it was called an Empire, power in the Fortier government was divided among the Council of Truth, the military, and the Science and Technology Institute. There was no emperor.

The Council of Truth was naturally similar to the one in the movies. It handled domestic affairs such as newborn citizens and planetary administration. The military, meanwhile, was led by Aeo's present-day adoptive father, General Zod, and was responsible for all military operations involving foreign wars, colonization, and protection. Its authority was immense. It wasn't at all like the handful of military officers in the movies who were casually crushed by the Council of Truth!

Finally, the Science and Technology Institute was headed by Superman Clark Kent's biological father, Jor-El. On that point, the movies had gotten it right.

As a powerful institution capable of standing as an equal to both the Council of Truth and the military, the Science and Technology Institute had formidable resources and capabilities. Its countless scientists were responsible for developing, upgrading, and maintaining all the Empire's technology—and that was what made the Institute so powerful.

In fact, the stargate, a breakthrough that marked the divide between ordinary civilizations and cosmic ones, had been developed by the Science and Technology Institute. It allowed the Fortier to leave their home star system and colonize the universe.

And the Empire had plenty of small ships capable of warp flight, planetary terraforming machines, and starships. How was it anything like the idiotic civilization in the movies, which had gone extinct without even managing to get a single ship off the planet?

The point was that Kryptonian civilization wasn't just countless years ahead of Earth in technology. The Empire had also achieved a great deal in culture, society, education, and many other fields. In reality, the Kryptonians weren't just all superhuman. Their society was also synonymous with stability, harmony, and order. Thanks to Gene Modulation, collective upheavals such as rebellions and betrayals were virtually nonexistent.

For centuries, every newborn Kryptonian had been taught to obey and remain loyal to the Empire, and to give everything they could to make it stronger and more prosperous. The Fortier also naturally sought order and tranquility, so Kryptonian civilization was powerful and seemingly perfect. Leaving aside whether such a society might have other fatal flaws, in the five years since Aeo's transmigration, Kryptonian civilization had developed steadily and in an orderly fashion. He hadn't heard anything about an impending extinction crisis.

Besides, in the movies, Superman's father knew perfectly well that extracting the core would cause an explosion. Yet aside from warning the Council of Truth once or twice, what had he actually done? The only person he saved was his own son. He'd let all the genetic infants of the rest of the Fortier people perish!

How heartless and selfish could he be? (Sorry, but selfish is the only word I can think of to describe Superman and his father in Man of Steel.)

In reality, Jor-El did have serious reservations about genetic inheritance, but he still chose to provide his genes to the Genesis Vault, ensuring that every exceptional Fortier would have descendants who could keep serving their country! It was written into the Empire's supreme constitution. Even Jor-El couldn't defy it...

After all that, Aeo only wanted to say that movies were movies and reality was reality. The two were worlds apart. You couldn't just assume you could bring the experience and beliefs of your previous life into this one. Otherwise, reality would teach you a lesson!