# "Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 98"
The morning mist clung to the rice paddies of the Philippines' Cordillera Mountains, where Ifugao *bale* (traditional houses) with pyramid roofs clustered along terraced slopes. Su Yao's jeep navigated muddy trails, passing women in *tapis* skirts carrying baskets of sweet potatoes, until it reached a village overlooking the iconic Banaue rice terraces. In a clearing surrounded by pine trees, a group of weavers sat on wooden benches, their fingers deftly tying threads on a backstrap loom. Their leader, 65-year-old Apo Whang-Od's protégé, Liling, held up a finished *wanno*—a loincloth woven with red and black patterns, its edges fringed with abaca fibers. "This is our *kadangyan* (wealth)," she said in Ifugao, her voice rough as mountain stone.
For the Ifugao, weaving is tied to their agricultural heritage and spiritual beliefs. The *wanno* (men's cloth) and *lufid* (women's skirt) feature motifs of rice grains (abundance), frogs (rain bringers), and mountains (ancestral protection), with techniques unchanged for over 2,000 years. Each thread is dyed with plants: *bignay* bark for red, *indigo* for blue, and *narra* wood for brown, using recipes guarded by *mumbaki* (shamans) who perform rituals to "awaken the color's spirit."
Liling's granddaughter, 22-year-old Gigi, a tourism student who documented weaving traditions, showed a *wanno* with a central diamond pattern. "This is for a *cañao* (thanksgiving ritual)," she explained. "The diamond represents the rice god Bulul—my grandmother chants prayers while tying each knot, so the cloth will please him. We harvest abaca during the full moon, when fibers are strongest—too many knots, and it angers the gods; too few, and the harvest fails."
Su Yao's team arrived with seaweed-metal fibers, hoping to strengthen the delicate abaca without losing its flexibility. They brought a portable loom and synthetic dye samples, but when Lin displayed a machine-woven prototype, Liling's husband, Kalinga, a *mumbaki* with a feathered headdress, scowled. "Weaving is a conversation with Bulul," he said, tossing the sample aside. "Your machine speaks no sacred words."
Crisis struck when Typhoon Ompong flooded the rice terraces, washing away abaca plants and damaging looms carved from narra wood. "The spirits reject your foreign threads," Kalinga said, as women wrung water from soaked fibers. With the *hagabi* (harvest festival) approaching, when new textiles honor rice deities, the village faced disaster.
Su Yao sat with Liling as she dried salvaged abaca by the fire. "We'll rebuild the terraces," she promised. Over three weeks, the team helped repair irrigation channels and replant abaca, while learning to weave on backstrap looms tied to pine trees. "Your body must move with the threads," Liling instructed, adjusting Su Yao's posture. "Too tense, and the pattern warps; too loose, and it loses meaning."
Lin coated metal fibers in beeswax and *gugo* bark extract, a natural conditioner Ifugao use for fibers. "It needs to bend like abaca," she said, testing a swatch. Liling ran her fingers over it: "Bulul will accept this."
Fiona designed a pattern: rice grains falling into ocean waves, metal threads mimicking sunlight on water. "It honors your terraces and our sea," she said. Kalinga blessed the cloth with a ritual, sprinkling rice wine on it: "The gods smile on this union."
At *hagabi*, their *wanno* was laid before a Bulul statue, metal threads glinting like dewdrops. As Su Yao left, Gigi pressed a small abaca square into her hand—a tiny rice grain beside a wave. "Our harvests now share the same water," she said.