"Damn it!"
Su Ming's curse could finally be heard, but he was no longer in the Bat Cave.
The Joker's unintended action got him into trouble.
He looked down at the little badge in his hand, just a yellow circular emblem that many Boy Scouts or kids have, sometimes given as a dining gift by fast-food restaurants.
But this one was special, with a few bright scarlet bloodstains on it, splattered as if they were part of the badge and couldn't be wiped off.
It was a smiley badge, with two black dots as eyes and a simple arc as a smiling mouth.
But paired with the eerie bloodstains, Su Ming immediately knew what it was.
It's the badge of the Jester.
In "Watchmen," the Jester liked to wear it on his chest. The Pharaoh tried to kill this former teammate, but Dr. Manhattan saved the Jester at the last moment, teleporting him into the sea from a tall building, sparing his life.
However, the badge fell, and the bloodstains on it were left from the fight between the Jester and the Pharaoh.
Originally, the Watchmen Universe was a standalone universe, but during the N52 Rebirth, the editors merged their world into the Main Universe, placing this inhumane superpower deep within the Main Cosmic Space.
The story background of "Watchmen" is the Cold War period, so this inhuman blue man was used as a symbol of the United States' great power, and the editors gave him a plethora of overwhelmingly powerful abilities.
In the original comics, there was such a line.
"There were no gods before in the world, and now there is one. He used to be an American."
Indeed, he is a god. Although not involving the concept of the Multiverse, his abilities in any Monistic Universe are top-notch.
He exists and doesn't exist simultaneously, a complete quantum aggregate, capable of foreseeing the future, creating and destroying worlds, manipulating time, altering cause and effect, annihilating particles.
This was only a small part of his abilities.
Figures like Barbatos, if he wanted to, could be wiped away with a single thought.
However, while God uses faith and Divine Art, he uses quantum theory, one theological and the other scientific.
Of course, God excels as the God coexisting in the Multiverse, whereas Dr. Manhattan is confined to a single universe.
"Watchmen" is one of DC's most successful comics, telling the story of a Superhero codenamed Pharaoh, feeling the threat of nuclear war looming heavily, assassinated his teammates, framed, and misled Dr. Manhattan, making him the common enemy of humanity.
When Dr. Manhattan, under his manipulation, instantaneously destroyed many cities, exhibiting inhuman and destructive power, mankind found a common enemy, and the world achieved peace.
After everything, when Dr. Manhattan learned the truth, he deemed Pharaoh's actions as right, so he silently bore the burden and headed towards the alien system.
Before leaving, he also killed the teammate, Rorschach, who planned to reveal the truth to the world.
Rorschach believed Dr. Manhattan was wrongly accused, and people needed to know the truth.
However, after becoming a Quantum Convergence, Dr. Manhattan no longer had human thoughts, knowing only pros and cons, deeming world peace and Earth's existence most important, irrelevant to truth.
If Rorschach exposed the truth, a world nuclear war would erupt, and the previously dead would have died in vain.
Thus, someone hindering peace became his enemy, and with a thought, he blasted Rorschach into blood mist.
........
After the world converged, Dr. Manhattan appeared in the Main Universe, still the same formula, the same flavor.
Threats to the world's continuation must be handled, accidents not allowed.
However, after so many years, his methods changed. He stole ten years from the Main World, and no one knew where these years went.
Only the Speedster, Barry's nephew Wally, noticed that everyone in the universe lost ten years, but his information remained vague.
Upon his reminder, Batman excavated in the Bat Cave and unearthed something from the rocks: the Jester's badge.
Bruce didn't know what this thing was for, so he always kept it as a decoration in the Bat Cave. His research yielded no progress.
It's just an ordinary aluminum product with an iron clip at the back. The paint and pattern were very common, probably selling for 5 US cents in a place like Gotham.
But Batman always had a feeling that this thing was special, though he never found out how.
.............
Su Ming had a hypothesis about the ten years of lost time. Dr. Manhattan might have extracted this time as a temporal and spatial prison, an incomplete independent world.
There were no heroes or villains, just an ordinary world, his controlled peaceful world.
Coupled with Slade's previous encounter, Su Ming suspected he was imprisoned by Manhattan in there.
Dr. Manhattan could infinitely extend this period. If he wished, he could even make ten years become eternal or let it reboot continuously.
Maybe Slade knew too much, and Manhattan decided on a lifetime imprisonment; or maybe Slade carried some unfavorable concept and thus needed isolation.
In short, within this temporal-labyrinth formed over ten years, Slade experienced life after life, one illusory existence after another.