In the forests of the Isawa, there are trees that are more than just trees. One of them is the subject I will tell you about.
A young shugenja, a student of Isawa Tadaka, a little befors the Clan Wars, rode into the forest. He had blood on his hands, and blood in his mind. He was one with the earth, but earth does not always protect you, and things dark and cold lure in its deep heart. He was just out of a cave, a cave just like the ones he had trained all his life in, the ones where he had built his world, but in that cave his world had fell apart. He had learned that he was not the one he thought, that he had listened to lies all his life. And the man who told him that had fallen under the young man's fury, one liar less to taint his mind and soul. But he knew that he could not trust anyone anymore.
And he finally arrived before a tree, a tree with a dark mind and a blood-red soul. A tree the liar had told him would be ther, waiting to catch him. For you can never win against the earth, and it always takes what belongs to it. And the young man hit with all the power of his arms and of his mind, with all the fury, the strength, and the speed he could. But earth laughs at the other elements. Nothing can affect it. Yet somehow, something did. Somehow, something in the infuriated mind of the youngster managed to hurt the tree whose roots were deep in evil. And at the moment the young man hit, he knew he did not win because of his mastery over elements. He simply imposed his will to nature. He acted like a human, and he knew the power of mortality. And at that moment he also knew he would have to fight all his life to keep it, but he had seen it once, and nothing could drive it off his mind again.
Nothing.
And from the single drop of blood that dripped from the tree's trunk, a seed was born, who would become a little treeling, and then a young plant, and a strong tree, and so would become the youngster.
If you go and see the tree, you will see that thanks to him, the dark tree does not corrupt the forest. And thanks to the man the youngster has become, darkness does not corrupt the minds of many of us. I will respect and admire that man ever for that, and wish he would still be alive.
But earth does not care about death, for all things live within it.
My tale is over