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“Yao Fei to Great Wall,” the bearded man spoke into his wrist as he pushed his back flat against the side of a crumpled building. The town of Gyantse was a mess. Tibet had often been claimed and broken and warred at from within by the Chinese but something much more deadly and destructive had come to the town.

The Accomplished Perfect Physician was a man of great intelligence and people skills. He was a decorated member of the Great Ten or, transversely, often the most hated of the group simply because of his liberal and what he considered to be forward thinking ideas. He shuddered looking at the tiny old building that now lay as a crumpled mess of bricks and window frames.

The demons, known now as Lilin, crawled and clawed their way through the wreckage, destroying shrines and anything with a religious context. They chewed and spat literature onto the ground, urinating on it and, in some cases, forcing themselves to vomit onto the pages. Idols and statues were scratched to pieces by gnawing mouths and viscous claws. All the while, a silent central Lilin, on its hind legs wandered with its hands behind its back, surveyed the surroundings.

“Remaining Super Functionaries are downed. They're all down. Something...something is causing a wave of illness that I cannot gather the time or the distance from these creatures to effectively examine.”

Shattered glass reflected his face as he remembered his first moments within this town’s walls as a man who belonged to himself, not to the Chinese Army. He'd joined it to save lives but his commanding officer was a violent and angry man. Yao Fei believed that he'd been abused or dejected in early life, which led him to be so cruel, forcing Yao Fei to murder someone and then opening fire on the young soldier when he objected. Yao fled the scene, his wounds eventually forcing him to pass out.

The Accomplished Perfection Physician turned silently, leaping over a wall and sucking his breath in through pursed lips to absorb the sound that was generated from his landing. He was an undisputed master of sound. His techniques bordered on mysticism rather than science and the fine line was something that generated a lot of discussion. Something he enjoyed whole-heartedly.

He twisted in place, racing backwards past the crawling mass of demon spawn that writhed and mutated in place, twisting itself around and changing their physical forms with every destroyed house and every mauled idol.

Dashing across the shattered ground and hiding against pieces of rubble and debris, he attempted to get near to his fallen team-mates. Perhaps now he would be able to give them a proper examination. Crouching low and glancing around, he attempted to find some sort of shelter from the creatures around him.

Ahead, lying in the rubble with growths spreading from his fingers outward, warping his skin and swelling his lymph nodes, was the Celestial Archer. He had been the first to fall in the town's walls as the monsters charged in, a mass of black filling the sky and distracting the warriors from the true threat that stormed the city like a powerful wave.

“Yao...” the Archer looked up at the Physician as he placed a finger over his bearded face and offered him a short smile.

“Xu Tao, please...be quiet for a moment. I need to examine you,” Yao Fei leaned forwards, a whistle escaping his lips. The sound wave passed through the Archers body and bounced back from his organs and bone structure. The Physician paused for a moment to consider what he'd heard.

“I thought that you were a Doctor before you were a soldier, Yao Fei. What is the holdup exactly?” Wu Mei-Xing coughed. She was a few feet from the Archer, blood dribbling from her collapsed and tumor-swollen womb.

The Physician shook his head slowly.

“I wanted to become a doctor but I was drafted into the army before I had a chance to begin my studies. If you please, Wu Mei...I need to concentrate.”

The woman scrunched her face up in frustration, wincing in pain from the growing mass within her ovaries. “Hurry; I am unaccustomed to being left to the bottom of the list.”

The Physician shook his head and began to review the information again. His mind shifted from his limited medical knowledge back to the day he defected from the army. His collapsed body was found by a local Doctor, one who slowly nursed him back to health. He treated the gunshot wound to his side with deft skill, skill that would have never been considered by the government as he was simply an old man living in a small town.

That old man held a terrible secret, however: he was indeed a Doctor and he was to pass on the mantle of Accomplished Perfect Physician to his son on that very day…the son that Yao Fei had murdered with the bayonet, which sat like a pregnant accusation on the end of his machine gun.

Yao Fei had murdered his savior’s son.

“YAO!” came the call from the side of him. He snapped back to reality as the Mother of Champions gripped his trouser leg tightly.

“I do not have time for your day-dreams. Find a way to cure me or go off and find someone who will. I cannot and will not be subjected to this pain for a moment longer!”

“You will have to become accustomed, Wu-Ming. This is not something I can click my fingers and generate; it requires time and effort to produce. I am unsure how to treat someone with such...severe injuries to their genital areas.”

“You will find a way IMMEDIATELY, Yao Fei!”

Yao Fei clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and sighed.

“I didn't gather the combined experience of sixteen life-times to be told what to do by you, Wu-Ming,” he stood his ground and stared down into her eyes. He was often considered to be Tibet’s Robin-Hood, moving from one area to the next healing and saving lives with his unique brand of heroics and giving, but he never had an expressive time-limit to understand things before. He couldn't do it immediately.

Yao Fei wanted to save lives and often he did. Every so often he needed to remind the people that he worked with, the other members of the Great Ten, that he was more than just their Medic. He was a member of the team and he had views, frustrations and a history as much as they did. The difference was that he did not allow the arrogance and ‘stature’ of his station to influence his ego. He still did what he did for humility and for enlightenment; to save the lives of others, not to destroy them.

“Listen to me,” he knelt down and placed his hands on her stomach, staring into her eyes. “In my first lifetime I was a herbalist and monk. I meditated my way through fasting and sacrificed into true enlightenment. This is where I discovered that sound was more than just something you hear. Sound was something you are.”

He clicked his fingers over her ovaries and listened. Placing his fore and middle finger over her lips to stem her response he continued. “Over the years, and life times, I learned that I could use the sound that I had become to heal peoples wounds. As I died and became reborn, the way the Doctor thrust me into the portal of sound the day I became the Accomplished Perfect Physician, I learned new ways to heal but also new ways to destroy.”

He massaged the area of skin and muscle over where her ovaries would sit and took a sharp intake of breath.

“I do not want to know your life story, Yao Fei. I have read your file. I know you are a coward and deserter.”

The Physician sighed and leaned backward, removing his hands from her stomach. “If I were a deserter then I would have left you to suffer instead of preventing your super-ovaries from eating themselves inside out.” He stood up and placed a boot on the Mother of Champions fingers. She winced in anger.

“I am a healer and I am humble. I did not sign up to believe that I am greater than my fellow man, because I am not. I want to spend my life atoning for taking the life of one man. I will not allow you, or any other member of the Great Ten, to devalue that.” He turned away from her and made his way back toward the Archer, coughing out an almost inhuman guttural sound. The cancers in his fingertips, which stretched the skin on his hands exploded and melted down into nothing, slowly released their swellings and liquidized the deadly cells out as pus through splits in the skin over his joints.

“It will be painful and it will take a while to seep out, but you will be as good as new when it is completed.”

“I'll see that you are tried and hung for this, Physician,” the Mother called.

Yao Fei stopped in his tracks and turned back to her. “You are healed in body but not in mind. As I am the only one who is capable of healing all the Great Ten members who have fallen here today, with the exception of myself might I add, and defeating these creatures, you would do well to remember one thing, Wu-Ming.”

He placed his finger against his lips and gave her a short and curt bow.

“I will not be returning to the Politburo. I will not be reduced to a whipping boy against threats that the greatest apparent heroes of China should be able to handle but cannot through arrogance and lack of preparation. You will have to cope without your medic, the way I have had to cope without my freedom and your respect.”

“Yao Fei...COWARD!” Wu-Ming screamed, drawing the attention of the Lilin all around them.

The Physician paused and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose gently. “Call it as you will, Wu-Ming, but I am not a coward by any stretch.” He turned to face the on-coming surge of monsters that powered through the wall and headed toward him. He found it curious, as he turned and ran, leaping and vaulting over the broken library wall where his team-mates had fallen, that the beasts ignored the Archer and Mother of Champions.

Charging forward he recalled his agility and how it had saved him many times in his frequent battles with the August General in Iron, or Captain has he had been known back them. They were as opposite as two humans could be and always argued back and forth about the needs of China. The General believed in Mao as much as Yao Fei thought he was mad.

“Great Wall, this is Yao Fei. This is my final report,” he paused as he clambered up the side of a building, hoisting himself onto the roof and staring down at the quickly accumulating tide of monsters. Slowly approaching was the monster he perceived to be their leader. Black eyes stared upwards as the foundations of the building began to rumble.

“Mother of Champions and Celestial Archer are healed and ready for pick up. I will locate the General, Ghost Fox and the Seven Deadly Brothers; however, I believe that the Immortal Man in Darkness is deceased. There is nothing I can do for him and you must send a replacement.”

“DA!” Yao Fei stomped forward, the force exploding from his mouth and carrying the destructive waves into the creatures below. The ones directly in the way of his blast exploded into chunks of flesh, delaying the collapse of the building just long enough for the Physician to continue his jaunt along the roof tops.

“Whey!” he called and the buildings on either side of the group toppled onto the wave of monsters, creating a barrier of rubble and mortar that he hoped would prevent them from getting close to him for a moment, long enough for him to treat the men downed at his feet.

He dropped from the roof in silence, landing next to the Seven broken forms of the Deadly Brothers.

“Your limbs are broken and your backs shredded. I can fix this but you will have to reassemble yourself one at a time,” Yao Fei spoke quietly, crouching down near the nigh-immortal warriors.

“Save yourself, Physician,” one of the brothers said, gesturing as much as he could towards the crumbling walls of the buildings he felled.

“I know they're coming, Yang Ki-Ying, but I can't leave you like this.” He whispered and clicked his lips and tongue. With each noise the brothers could feel their bones knitting and the flesh that had exploded to allow their bones to become exposed to the air suck itself together.

“We will try to hold them off,” three of the healed brothers said as they got to their feet slowly.

“You will do no such thing,” the Physician said as he continued to work his medicine across the brothers’ bodies. “You need to reassemble yourselves. I think you'll find the creatures will ignore you, Masters Yang.” Yao Fei got to his feet as the final brothers mended themselves. They slowly melted together, a brother’s flesh melting into another, bone knitting together to reform itself into a single form.

“They will?” one of the brothers asked, looking with slack jawed curiosity at the Physician.

“The black cloud that accompanied these creatures contained miniature versions of themselves and that is what is attacking your immune systems. That is why your bones broke and why the Mother's ovaries tried to eat themselves. The Monsters are inside us.”

“And you are not affected...why?” one of the other brothers asked as the remaining brothers began to melt into a singular being.

“Because I am sound, Masters Yang. I am sound and I heal myself,” he said with a curt bow, turning at the waist and clicking his tongue against the side of his teeth, a burst of sound driving a trough through the cobbled streets and exploding with the buildings and monsters on impact.

“You'd do well to get yourself out of the way, Masters Yang. I still have the two angriest members of our group to find and heal.”

The man who was Seven gave a curt nod to the physician and a smile.

“Take care of yourself, Masters Yang.”

Yao Fei turned and ran again, past the sputtering machinery that was once the Shoalin Robot. One day he would learn the hex that was his language and see if he could turn it into a system for his own use. Perhaps one day he could heal machines with his sounds rather than just people and become a true physician across the board.

The Lilin themselves were beginning to thin out. With every attack the creatures were dying and not returning. The only difference being that the creature walking upright focused on him.

“I don't think I have time for you right now.” Yao clicked his fingers in front of his face and whistled through the clicks. The ground in front of the creatures broke away and the remaining beasts on all fours dropped down into the ditch. The upright entity paused for a moment to consider what was going on.

It pointed at Yao with long hooked fingers.

“Not yet,” the Physician said, stroking his beard. “Not yet.”

He turned on his heels and made a break toward the tallest of the buildings around…the temple where the battle had originally started. Its pillars were shattered and its steps were broken, and the huge idol that had been placed within it had been melted and shattered, fragments of its golden form littered the ground as Yao Fei made his way slowly up the steps.

“I never wanted this,” he whispered to himself. The mantle of the Physician was thrust upon him along with the name. He never wanted to be anything more than a good person, but now he found himself constantly in situations that meant he had to hurt and kill things. In conflicts that meant his good nature was tested constantly against the anger of his team-mates and their vitriol fuelled hate toward his beliefs.

The Physician knelt down next to the Ghost Fox Killer and the August General in Iron. They had fallen and crawled towards each other. He was the only man who could touch her and she was the only woman who could care for a man as ugly as he. Crouching down and taking both their hands, the Ghost Fox's hand rested on the cloth of his sleeve which he'd pulled up, he gave them both a squeeze.

“I will cure you of your ailments, despite my better judgement.”

The General looked up at the Physician and scowled. “Coward. Why do you not face the creature instead of wasting your time here? Do you fear a battle?”

“I don't fear anything other than spending more time with you, Captain.” Yao Fei enjoyed reminding their leader of his position prior to being General. He was the leader of the Great Ten but he would never be Yao Fei's. He was his own man, even if the whims of the Politburo meant that he couldn't achieve those freedoms.

The sound of grit shifting underneath the foot of something caused Yao Fei to turn around. He was instantly taken off his feet and sent flying backwards into a partially standing pillar that sat at the back of the Temple. He slid down it and shook his head, trying to regain his senses. The standing Lilin, now on closer inspection, was nearly as tall as him. It appeared to be black and white, like a magpie, with white arms and flashes across its body, linking into patterns that resembled teeth.

“We had heard word from America that you, the Lilin, were attacking heroes over the world. If you believe that you can take China, then you will be disappointed.”

The creature said nothing, simply moving towards the Physician. He got to his feet and cupped his hands around his mouth, letting loose a single yelp that barely lasted more than a third of a second. The creature stopped and returned the call.

“What?” the Physician replied, watching as his sound waves were nullified in the air. The creature moved forwards, returning the call a second time. Yao Fei leapt to the side and landing in a tight roll as the pillar exploded.

“How do you know that?” Yao Fei asked. This knowledge was created nearly a century ago. It was used to turn back a two hundred strong horde of Mongols, and now it was being repelled and replied too by something that couldn't possibly have been alive during that time.

Or could it?

“Kami or Demon?” Yao queried. He was met with silence. The creature clearly knew his repertoire. It stepped forwards and screamed.

“Whey!”

The buildings around the Physician began to crumple inwards, dropping brickwork and debris on top of him. Throwing himself backwards he managed to avoid the majority of the debris, but a large chunk of it still fell on him. Pinning him downwards and coating him in dust. He took the moment to try and sort out a plan of attack. Clearly this creature had been following him. It had learnt the attacks he'd used on the four legged creatures earlier because it had adapted immediately to his previous attack. There was no way he could fight it the way he would anything else.

He broke free of the debris with a smacking of his lips, shattering the rubble on top of him and turning it into dust. He knew exactly what he had to do to defeat the creature, but it was going to be dangerous.

Clambering over the shattered buildings, he threw himself into the opening, using his agility and balance to run along fallen walls and broken pillars, jumping from fragment to fragment as the creature aimed its mouth at him screaming in anger.

“Whey! Whey! WHEY! WHEY!”

Each blast grew more powerful than the next, exploding the previous place Yao Fei had stood in with plumes of dust and vaporised rock. He knew if he slowed down he'd be destroyed, and the hope for China and the Great Ten's two ‘leaders’ would be lost.

He dropped down onto the paving of the temple as the creature stamped forwards.

“DA!”

The ground before him exploded. Yao Fei leapt through the air, stretching his body out into a dive, and then into a roll which stopped a few feet from the fallen General. He gathered the staff up in his hands, twisting it over his shoulders and charging forwards.

“DA!”

Yao Fei toppled to one side as he only just managed to dodge the second explosion in the ground. He prepared himself, running slightly up the side of a destroyed pillar and leaping through the air.

“WHEY! WHEY!”

The pillar that the Physician was leaping toward exploded as he was mid jump. He took the opportunity to pull himself up into a ball and blow a tiny sound against the end of the staff that he held before him.

It hurtled through the air and out of the plume of dust he was engulfed in, shooting towards its target and ramming the glowing energy projecting double rod at the end of the staff through the creature’s chest. It stared down for a moment before it fell backwards, landing on the ground with a spray of dust and blue ichor-like blood.

“Hurry up, Physician. You're wasting valuable time...” the General called.

Yao Fei looked back from his position on the ground, his unsteady landing had jarred his shins. “I don't think that will be happening, Captain,” the Physician continued, walking past the two fallen members of the Great Ten and toward the steps away from the temple.

“What do you mean? I command you to come here and heal us, Yao Fei. Do not remind us all of the coward you really are.”

“Fang Zhifu...Heal yourself.”

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For more Accomplished Perfect Physician see Upcoming Issues of Justice League of America!

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