User blog comment:Martialmaniac/Illumi's necromancy/@comment-10528819-20151020134259

Maybe he just turn them into needleman, that, as he said, work by the order given until they, eventually, kill themselfs by exaustion. Maybe he turned them into needleman with the order to fool the mafia and just label them as dead after that, while they were biologically still alive. I also belive in this theory because in the anime (I'm not sure how it was done in the manga) they had needles on thir heads