I really hope

that what you're saying is true. Cause both paths have been horrendous in terms of long term consequences (at least on the surface).
Lichen is already losing + you literally give him an instakill button that we have no way of removing any time soon. Even if you kill him and take the turtle, that still leaves a goddamn turtle somewhere in the universe that someone can find and kill you with it.
LB is arguably a little better since:
A.) The apparent boosts she provides are way greater.
B.) The whole soulrape thing could not be as terminal or bad as it seems. Besides, unlike the turtle, it is only directly tied to her and there has been no indication that killing or disabling LB would do the same to you (but getting to that point is another problem entirely).
Always been a fan of neutral routes in games, especially since that's the one that makes most sense narratively, and because the Wu Goat is literally probably the only one who could pull something like that off. His physique is genuinely 'Others don't like you, Heavens don't like you, make em cry about it and become a God anyway'.
But so far Niki has been holding out on us neutral bros massively, with the new Chao Tri-Dao acquisition path being the only crumb he's given us. So far it seems that the best path is Get Tri-Dao from LB early on -> Be non-commital about everything -> Agree to protect Yue Fang to get the Void-Grade Manual soon -> Refuse to let LB soulrape you -> ???