So about what happens to aura after the death of its owner, now I arrived to a definite conclusion. Before stating it, let me first tell you about how I used to view this matter.
I always thought that in most cases aura just fades away after death (based on the fact that it is defined as life energy). Moreover, I believed that in some exceptional cases the aura did remain on the corpse, and in some even rarer cases that aura could get stronger. This is according to what Phinx says:
Now, my new conclusion is that aura always remains on the corpse of the deceased, and does not entirely fade away. Then, either it gets stronger or it stays the same. The former is what is known as "nen getting stronger after death".
What lead me to this conclusion are some events which transpired during the chimera ants arc:
I always thought that in most cases aura just fades away after death (based on the fact that it is defined as life energy). Moreover, I believed that in some exceptional cases the aura did remain on the corpse, and in some even rarer cases that aura could get stronger. This is according to what Phinx says:
Now, my new conclusion is that aura always remains on the corpse of the deceased, and does not entirely fade away. Then, either it gets stronger or it stays the same. The former is what is known as "nen getting stronger after death".
What lead me to this conclusion are some events which transpired during the chimera ants arc:
- Meruem's ability allows him to get stronger by consuming a nen user' aura. Well the user is obviously dead while being eaten, but his aura is still there and gets absorbed by the King of ants.
- The fact that even after getting turned into minced meat, The queen (and eventually Merumem who was inside her) could get a taste of the aura of Pokkle.
- Eventhough Kaito was dead, Knuckle still needed to seal his nen away. This means that his aura still remained on his corpse.
- Ikalgo can enter corpes of the dead to control them, and even use their nen ability. This at least means that a trace of the dead body's aura remains, because it has records of the ability itself.