Peer to Peer between versions?

Greetings. 

We have a 2014 environment that we want to upgrade to 2016. The OLTP box replicates a 2 TB DB to 6 other reporting servers with transaction replication. 

Our new 2016 environment is going to use new hardware. The plan was to simply backup/ restore from 2014 to 2016, then rebuild replication in the new environment. However, I came up w a new idea that may save us some time:

1. We build out the new environment software. 
2. We configure Peer To Peer replication between the 2014 and 2016 environments.
3. We setup Transaction replication between the 2016 OLTP and reporting servers like we currently have in 2014.
4. At the time of our choosing we point the apps to the 2016 OLTP environment.

I tried this in a DEV environment but am having issues configuring a Publication in 2016 (not yet adding a Subscription, so I know it's not version related). 

Before I get too far in the weeds here I thought I'd ask if this is even possible due to version differences?

Thanks!

Thanks in advance! ChrisRDBA