I'm Not Sun Wukong

I'm a mortal rogue cultivator, so poor I can barely scrape by. My greatest talent is haggling a three-coin item down to two. Then one day, a rusty iron rod I had thrown away seventeen times and still couldn't get rid of latched onto me. The whole Three Realms was looking for it: the Golden-Banded Cudgel of the Victorious Fighting Buddha. They say that once you put on the headband, you stop being yourself. Black-armored Buddhist soldiers chased me half a street. The old ox of Jilei Mountain was waiting for me to grow horns, and there was a boy who was always barefoot, spinning his Fire-Tipped Spear like a gust of wind. I didn't have many people with me: A quiet, sharp-tongued lingzhi girl who always turned the hot side of the medicine toward herself when she handed it to me; And a carefree Great Deity of the Three Altars and Seas, who kicked stones with more seriousness than he fought. They all said I was the reincarnation of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, and that once I awakened, I could sweep across the Three Realms. But I don't want to be some world-beating hero. I only want to know: after tasting power, can I still be myself? Later, the flames of Spirit Mountain burned for three days and three nights. Some became Buddhas, some vanished, and someone knelt in the scorched earth, holding a lingzhi plant and waiting a full thousand years. It turned out the most powerful thing in this world was never the Golden-Banded Cudgel. It was knowing you might lose and still choosing the path you wanted to walk.