The military communication channel was busy. Jiang Ye tried for over ten minutes before finally reaching a doctor.
To be precise, it was a medical robot, scheduled to be air-dropped in an hour.
With time to spare, Jiang Ye changed into his mecha and left the fortress, taking a rocket artillery vehicle to personally check on the afflicted soldiers.
A cordon had been set up at the edge of the rainforest, manned by soldiers from the third team. The rocket artillery vehicle stopped outside the cordon, and as Jiang Ye disembarked, the third team leader immediately ran over and saluted.
"Take me to see him," Jiang Ye ordered.
The third team leader led the way into the center of the cordon. A large patch of mushrooms, each the size of a human head and green in color, covered the area. Amidst the mushrooms lay a gunsmith mecha, still writhing and emitting happy laughter. Many of the surrounding mushrooms had already been crushed.
Jiang Ye frowned and walked over, kicking the writhing, afflicted soldier. "Can you hear me?"
The patient struggled for a while before sitting up, trembling as if with Parkinson's. He managed a salute before falling face-first back into the mushroom patch. It was clear he was conscious, but his body was no longer under his control, like a robot with ample power but a damaged structure.
"Did you eat something you shouldn't have?" Jiang Ye pointed to the ground. "Did you eat these mushrooms?"
The patient shook his head. "No."
"How do you feel now?" Jiang Ye asked.
"Great! Great! So great!" the patient exclaimed in a strange voice.
"How is it great?" Jiang Ye didn't understand.
"My whole body... my whole body feels great... I'm dying of happiness..." the patient giggled, acting like a madman.
"Snap out of it, there's no wife here, this is just a mushroom patch!" Jiang Ye kicked him again. "Can you try to be more lucid!"
"What's a wife compared to this... it's better than my wife..." the patient lay on the mushrooms, convulsing violently.
The third team leader came over and said to Jiang Ye, "He's been in this state for nearly half an hour. At first, he was rolling around desperately, shouting and screaming, with plenty of energy. Now he might be exhausted and is half-dead. Oh, and he's lost bladder and bowel control. We haven't checked the extent of it, he told us himself."
Jiang Ye was puzzled. "He seems very happy. Did he eat some kind of addictive plant? Have the surrounding plants been scanned? Are there any issues with these mushrooms on the ground?"
"There shouldn't be. We don't dare take off our helmets when we're on missions because the air is toxic, so we can't eat anything in the wild," the third team leader said helplessly. "All the plants have been scanned, and the mushrooms too. There are no addictive species, just simple poisonous mushrooms and plants that kill you quickly if eaten. If he had eaten something, he'd be dead by now."
"Also, it seems he didn't suddenly fall ill. His comrades said he started acting strangely this morning. When he left the fortress, he was in a great mood, saying he didn't know why, but he felt full of energy, like he'd been injected with stimulants."
Jiang Ye pondered for a moment. "Has anyone else felt something similar? That feeling of being full of energy?"
"Yes..." the third team leader stammered. "I feel a bit like that right now."
Jiang Ye instinctively took half a step back. "What exactly does it feel like?"
"It's like being full of energy, refreshed, wanting to run wildly across the plains, as fast as I can, until I can fly, higher than the sky." As the third team leader spoke, he suddenly shivered. "It's over."
Jiang Ye's eyes widened. "What's over?"
The third team leader looked up at the sky, taking deep breaths. "I want to fly."
Jiang Ye became a little flustered. "Be normal, don't scare me."
"Really, I want to fly. I feel so light." The third team leader's body suddenly began to tremble, as if from fear, or perhaps an electric shock. "I don't know why, but suddenly my body feels so comfortable, comfortable from head to toe..."
With a dull metallic clang, the third team leader fell straight to the ground!
"I can't... I've fallen ill too... Hehehehe!" The third team leader's tone became strange. "I know what it feels like. He was right, it's really great! Hahahahahahaha, it's getting better and better!"
The third team leader rolled on the mushroom patch, laughing maniacally, more wildly than a tumble dryer, flattening the mushrooms like a lawnmower. The surrounding guards looked back, stunned, unable to understand why their captain had suddenly gone crazy. Then, someone reacted.
"Damn it, the captain's sick too!"
"Sir, stay away from him! He's gone mad!"
"Everyone, move back, don't get infected!"
"This is really weird, this disease is contagious."
Jiang Ye didn't move. It wasn't his real body, so dying from illness didn't matter. He stepped forward, pinned the rolling third team leader, and lifted his faceplate.
The third team leader's eyes were wide open, his eyeballs spinning wildly, and in opposite directions. It looked like billiard balls colliding. In his vision, the world must have been spinning, even more so than that. The entire world was being torn apart, collapsing, exploding, folding...
"Close your eyes!" Jiang Ye shouted at him. "Can you control your eyeballs, stop them from shaking!"
The third team leader didn't close his eyes but continued to grin foolishly, his tongue sticking out high, swaying like pink seaweed in the ocean, saliva sputtering out.
"Tell me how you feel!" Jiang Ye slapped his face, closing his faceplate. "While you're still lucid, tell me how you feel!"
The third team leader's condition was worse than the first patient. In the blink of an eye, he had lost the ability to speak, possibly even consciousness. His limbs convulsed as if electrified, and he occasionally let out a series of ghostly laughs. His entire body was out of control. Jiang Ye initially tried to restrain him, but his struggles grew stronger, and he finally pushed Jiang Ye's arm away, rolling wildly on the mushroom patch.
After waiting for more than forty minutes, the third team leader finally tired and stopped moving, lying in the mushroom patch and panting, just like the first patient.
Another rocket artillery vehicle rumbled over, and soldiers jumped off, carrying metal boxes, running to Jiang Ye. "Report, the air-dropped doctor robot has arrived!"
Jiang Ye had already read the instruction manual. He took the box and pulled out a small robot shaped like a mechanical dog, placing it on the first patient.
The robot dog immediately got to work, stripping the patient's mecha from head to toe, then performing a full-body scan and drawing a large can of blood. That can of blood, at least two liters, was entirely consumed by the robot dog. The patient was smoothly drained to death, lying motionless on the ground. The robot dog then pried open the patient's skull and scooped out a small cup of brain tissue to eat.
The surrounding guards all caught a glimpse and let out sounds of disgust.
Immediately, a prompt appeared on Jiang Ye's faceplate:
[Preliminary Medical Result: Suspected Viral Infection]
[Comparing with virus database...]
Jiang Ye waited patiently. He wanted to see what kind of virus had driven his two soldiers mad.