Chapter 128: The Tathagata Palm

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The interview was very simple, consisting of a few straightforward questions for Zhang Tan.

“Is this your first book-signing event?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still in high school?”

“Yes. The school happened to give us three days off for New Year’s, so I had time to come to the signing.”

“How does it feel to see so many enthusiastic readers?”

Zhang Tan glanced at the long line and said, “I’m deeply moved. The signing was arranged rather hurriedly, so I never expected so many people to come and support me. My heart feels warm—warmer even than the sunshine today.”

The sun blazed overhead, warming both body and heart.

After asking a few more questions, the female reporter did not linger. She stepped aside and prepared to interview the readers who had come to buy books and get them signed. At that moment, Li Yan called over the staff and began allowing readers to come forward. This was not a particularly formal signing. No tickets or numbered passes were required, though everyone still had to queue.

The first person in line was a bespectacled young man who looked like a university student. He had just bought a new book here.

“Seeing you in person, Tan Zhang, you’re even younger than I imagined. I really love The Legend of the Condor Heroes,” the young man said excitedly.

“Thank you for your support.” Zhang Tan nodded with a smile, opened the book, and swiftly wrote his calligraphic signature across the page, bold and elegant, with sweeping strokes like a dragon and phoenix.

Once he had finished, he closed the book and handed it back.

A surge of satisfaction swept through Zhang Tan. His first-ever signature for another person had been completed.

It was not as thrilling as he had imagined, but it felt wonderful.

With a happy heart, he began signing for the second reader.

The second reader seemed rather shy. After handing over the book, he said nothing at all. Once he had received the signature, he left immediately.

The third reader, however, chattered on and on, wanting to take a photograph with Zhang Tan. He had even brought out his camera, but Li Yan hurriedly stopped him, saying that many readers were still waiting and photographs would have to wait until the signing was over.

Even so, after leaving the table, he took several enthusiastic photographs of Zhang Tan signing books.

One by one, the readers passed their books forward to be signed. Yet even after Zhang Tan had been signing for quite some time, the line showed no sign of shrinking. If anything, it seemed to be growing longer as more people arrived after the event began.

After interviewing Zhang Tan, the female reporter did not leave. Instead, she prepared to interview some of the readers who had received his signature.

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“You’ve already gotten Tan Zhang’s signature?”

“Mm-hmm, I have.” Facing the camera, the young man looked even more excited.

“Do you like The Legend of the Condor Heroes?”

“I love it. I’ve always enjoyed martial-arts novels, and I’ve read many from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Later I started reading Tan Zhang’s The Four Great Constables, which was extraordinarily well written. But The Legend of the Condor Heroes is even better. Every character feels so vivid, as if they’ve come alive. It’s simply incredible.”

The female reporter asked another question. “How do you feel about meeting Tan Zhang in person?”

“He’s so young! I really admire him. To be able to write martial-arts fiction this good is amazing. I’ve read the first five volumes of The Legend of the Condor Heroes at least ten times. The more I read them, the more classic they seem. There’s Mei Feng and Chen Xuanfeng…”

Once the young man began talking about the novel, he could not stop. Words poured from him in an endless stream.

The female reporter listened for a while, only to realize that she understood none of it. She had never read the novel, so she interrupted him with a smile.

“All right, thank you very much for accepting our interview.”

Then, accompanied by the cameraman, she moved on to the next reader.

This time, she interviewed a girl who had just hurried over, apparently around seventeen or eighteen.

“Are you here to get a book signed as well?”

The girl was still slightly out of breath. When she saw the reporter interviewing people, she tried to shy away, but finally smiled and agreed.

“I came all the way from Huainan. I was delayed on the road, and there are only two hours left for the signing. I don’t know whether I’ll manage to get a signature.”

The female reporter looked at the long line stretching ahead of them and thought the girl’s chances were slim. Even so, she comforted her.

“You should be able to make it… Do girls like martial-arts novels too?”

“I love them.” The girl smiled shyly. “I love the romances in the story. Love in the martial world feels especially romantic. Zhang Tan writes romance so beautifully. Guo Jing and Huang Rong are truly an enviable couple. The love between Ying Gu and Old Mischief is so tragic and beautiful. Ying Gu waited for Old Mischief for so many years…”

Another reader hopelessly lost in the story.

The female reporter sighed. Suddenly, she felt that her understanding of Tan Zhang was still terribly shallow.

When she had received the assignment to cover Zhang Tan’s signing, she had known a little of the background. The Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House had contacted the television station. Under normal circumstances, events like this would notify the local media and invite them to conduct a brief interview.

So the female reporter had regarded it as nothing more than an easy assignment.

Who could have known that, upon arriving, she would find such a long line? His popularity was no lower than that of the moderately famous authors she had encountered before—if anything, it was greater.

She had done her homework and knew that Zhang Tan was a high-school student who wrote martial-arts novels, and that his The Legend of the Condor Heroes was extremely popular. But she did not enjoy martial-arts fiction and had never truly understood its appeal.

She had assumed it was merely a publicity gimmick, using a high-school student to attract attention.

After all, Han Han had already shown how effective such publicity could be. Another teenage author would hardly have been surprising.

What she had not expected was that Zhang Tan’s readers would be so devoted to his novels, speaking of them as though they were timeless classics.

“Looks like he’s a genuinely talented author,” the female reporter thought.

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“I’ll have to conduct a more in-depth interview later. This might turn into a major story!”

…

Zhang Tan had no idea that the female reporter was contemplating a major feature.

He only knew that his hand had begun to ache.

He had been signing for an hour. Hundreds of books had already sold out, yet a long queue still stretched behind them. Both he and the publishing house had underestimated the impact of The Legend of the Condor Heroes. His fans were astonishingly devoted.

While Zhang Tan signed, Li Yan helped keep the readers engaged and asked many of them where they had come from.

There were quite a few readers from other cities, including Huainan, Chaohu, Liu’an, Suzhou, Anqing, and Chizhou. They had all made the journey by bus specifically for the event.

One reader had even come from Jiangsu. To obtain Zhang Tan’s signature, he had deliberately arranged a business trip to Hefei.

“Let’s take a short break. Tan Zhang has been signing continuously for an hour and needs to relax his wrist,” Li Yan announced hurriedly, urging Zhang Tan to rest.

His hands could take a break, but the atmosphere could not be allowed to grow dull.

After signing for an hour, Zhang Tan had grown accustomed to the scene. They were all his fans, after all. There was no reason to be nervous. He picked up the microphone and interacted with the crowd.

“I only wish I had mastered the Art of Ambidexterity. With a pen in each hand, I could sign twice as fast.”

“Tan Zhang, can you perform martial arts?” someone in the audience shouted.

Zhang Tan put on a solemn, nostalgic expression.

“When I was a child, I once met a beggar. He had long, disheveled hair, a scraggly beard, and a gaunt face with a pair of eyes that gleamed sharply. The beggar stopped me and said, ‘Young man, I can tell from your extraordinary bone structure that you’re a once-in-ten-thousand martial-arts prodigy. The task of safeguarding world peace rests on your shoulders.’”

The readers below burst into laughter. The story sounded hilarious.

They had no idea that the lines came from a film.

When the laughter subsided, Zhang Tan continued.

“Then he pulled a little booklet from inside his robe. On the cover was an image of the Buddha, and the title was Buddha’s Palm. He said to me, ‘I can see that we’re destined to meet, so I’ll sell it to you for ten dollars.’ I ignored him and tried to leave, but he called after me, ‘This book isn’t suitable? Wait, I have more.’

“Then he pulled out a whole stack of little booklets. Their titles included Thousand-Hand Palm, Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms, Nine Yang Divine Skill, One Yang Finger, Nine Swords of Solitude, and many others.”

The readers broke into laughter once again. Ten dollars apiece—it was remarkable that Zhang Tan could invent something so absurd.

Zhang Tan laughed too.

“Later, the old beggar told me that every book has a story behind it… So I wrote the story behind Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms. That story became this book, The Legend of the Condor Heroes.”