It’s disappointing because there are a ton of quirky units they could have gone with instead and still have it be more accurate.
They should really just get rid of the Monk and Disciples in the main civ and make the kung fu guys a polearm unit at the Shaolin Temple like this:
As for the hero’s auxiliary troops, they could go with something like Wolf Warriors to keep it as a shock infantry unit. They were famous for fighting the Wokou so using them as support for fighting treasure guardians would make sense. If the hero was styled as a Tusi, recruiting an army of other units based on that system could work. Tu Bing with their hook knives or Bai Gan Bing armed with lang xian. A pairing of Wolf Warriors and Lang Xian (wolf brush) could be called a Wolf Banner. Maybe make them recruitable as a levy with a cooldown instead of limited in number.