# "Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 95"
The sun blazed over the terraced hills of Oaxaca, where cactus fields met pine forests and adobe villages clung to mountainsides. Su Yao's car wound through valleys dotted with cornfields, passing women in embroidered blouses balancing baskets of chili peppers on their heads, until it reached a Zapotec community. In a courtyard shaded by a giant mesquite tree, a group of weavers sat at wooden looms, their fingers moving in rhythm as they wove wool into vibrant blankets.
Their leader, 60-year-old Martina, held up a finished *telar*—a thick wool blanket dyed in deep purples and golds, with patterns of stars and cornstalks. "This tells our story," she said in Zapotec, her voice warm as the sun. For the Zapotec, weaving is a sacred act: the *telar* (loom) represents the cosmos, with vertical threads as the sky and horizontal threads as the earth. Motifs of quetzals (divine messengers) and lightning bolts (rain-bringing spirits) adorn blankets used in ceremonies honoring Pitao Cozobi, the corn god.
Martina's granddaughter Ximena, 23, showed a wedding blanket stitched with interlocking diamonds. "Each color has meaning," she explained—crimson for life, indigo for rain, yellow for corn. The wool comes from local sheep, dyed with plants: cochineal bugs for red, indigo leaves for blue, marigolds for gold. Recipes are guarded by *curanderas* (healers) who chant prayers while mixing dyes.
Su Yao's team arrived with seaweed-metal threads, hoping to strengthen the wool. But when Lin displayed a machine-woven sample, Martina's husband Octavio, a stoic man with a straw hat, shook his head. "Weaving is a conversation with the gods," he said, tapping the machine-made fabric. "This speaks no language."
Disaster struck when an earthquake rattled the village, cracking the ancient wooden looms and burying dye plants under rockslides. "The earth rejected your metal," Octavio said, as women cried over broken looms. With the *Guelaguetza* harvest festival approaching, when new blankets are offered to the gods, the community despaired.
Su Yao knelt beside Martina as she sorted salvaged wool. "We'll rebuild the looms," she promised. Over three weeks, the team helped carve new looms from oak trees and replant dye crops, while learning to weave on traditional *telar* under Martina's guidance. Lin coated metal threads in beeswax and cactus sap, making them bind with wool without disrupting the dye.
Fiona designed a pattern: cornstalks reaching toward stars that melt into ocean waves, with metal threads mimicking sunlight on water. "It honors your mountains and our sea," she said. Martina ran her fingers over it, smiling. "The gods will listen," she said.
At *Guelaguetza*, their blanket was laid before the village shrine, metal threads glinting like fallen stars. As Su Yao left, Ximena pressed a small wool square into her hand—a tiny cornstalk beside a wave. "Our worlds are now woven as one," she said.