"Or perhaps the point of the game was for all the players to believe they had won, that they had succeeded in some way. If there is no win condition and you don't claim to have won, then you're clearly losing, are you not?"

Lorne sees that putting pressure on Jianli's stones isn't particularly doing anything. If the boy was trying to let Lorne win, he wasn't doing a good job at it. If you let someone win, the goal is not for them to notice. Or perhaps Jianli figures that he possesses so much skill that he can beat Lorne easily in the endgame. Of course, Lorne wasn't going to let that happen. The endgame is all about structure and how strong your territory is. If anyone knew anything about those two factors, it was Lorne.

"Amael, if you keep thinking like that, you'll stop having fun. What we live for isn't to fulfill bizarre prophecies or break people's windows. We live because we were born and decided to stick around."