The moment Byron Bishop finished speaking, someone in the audience called out, “Master Bishop, most of us only know fragments of the story—please, tell us the whole tale!”
Bishop smiled and cleared his throat. “Very well. During the reign of Empress of Tang in China, there was a celebrated master called Huizi Yang. His fame had reached such heights that it began to annoy the Empress herself. So she summoned him to court and assigned him an impossible task—to carve the complete text of the Tao Te Ching onto a jade piece no larger than a fingernail.”
A ripple of awe moved through the hall.
“Perhaps Her Majesty’s real intention,” Bishop continued, “was to humble him a little. After all, he was called the Sage of Sculpture—a title that rivaled her own authority.”
“But Huizi Yang was no ord
