There were many protected Primitive Races in the Milky Way, and Earthlings were merely one of the less noticed ones.
If you told any proper Interstellar Citizen about them, they would say they had never heard of them. They were complete nobodies.
But Cloud Ghosts were different. Their potential rating had reached the peak of the second tier, infinitely close to the first tier. Across the Milky Way, plenty of people had heard of them.
Primitive Race potential ratings ranged from 0 to 999. Single digits were third tier, double digits were second tier, and triple digits were first tier.
The reason zero existed was that reviewers would often say, "I can't tell what level of potential this race should be marked with. Let's temporarily rate it zero, observe it for a few hundred more years, and reassess it once we have more detailed data."
In truth, they just felt there were traces of other civilizations everywhere and could not be bothered to study them.
Earthlings were that kind of race. Their rating had long been zero. Only after they mastered atomic energy and got hyped up by the Anunnaki did they receive a 0.1.
That was worse than getting a zero!
With a zero, others would assume the civilization had not been formally rated and might turn out to be highly promising in the future. But a 0.1 only made them a bigger joke.
To put it bluntly, they were trash with a potential rating below 1.
Of course, that was the official standard. The black market had another set of standards. Because Earthlings possessed exceptionally rich emotions, and their culture, language, and customs gave many people a sense of familiarity with the Dragon Race and Golden Crow Race, they were rated as delicious.
Even so, Cloud Ghosts were