These people had come mainly for Hongyu or other young women who possessed both talent and beauty.
There was another reason as well: booking a room and hiring a girl for company... cost quite a bit of silver. Poor scholars naturally had no money for such things. To them, if they could win the favor of a talented and beautiful young woman through their literary skills...
That was countless times better than women whose crimson lips had been tasted by thousands and whose jade arms had pillowed thousands.
High-end brothels never turned away talented young men from poor families. If they did not spend money hiring girls and only paid for the most basic expenses... even poor scholars could afford it.
There were even impoverished scholars who had lived here for over a decade, with food, clothing, lodging, and travel all provided, without spending a single coin. But such people were either truly talented or had caught the eye of some young woman.
At that moment, over a hundred people stood by the lake, all gazing toward its center. Fu Hua found a spot in a corner and stopped there, looking toward the middle of the lake. A pavilion draped with gauze curtains on all sides stood in the center of the scenic lake.
From this distance, she could vaguely make out two maidservants standing on either side inside the pavilion through the gauze curtains, while a woman sat on the floor and played the qin.
Because of the distance and the curtains, they could not see the people inside clearly. Yet that only added a touch of mystery, making people itch to find out what she truly looked like.
"Is that Miss Hongyu?"
The figure in the pavilion was indeed difficult to make out, but she vaguely felt that